
lass_L/H^ 



PRp:sF:N"n:i) by 






LECTURES 

CONCERNING THIS TIME AND THE TIMES 
OF OLD. 



PRIJCTED BY R. CLAY, LONDON, 
FOR 

MACMILLAN & CO. CAMBRIDGE. 

iLonHon: BELL AND DALDY, 186, FLEET STREET. 
Dulltin: HODGES AND SMITH. 
CiJinturg^: EDMONSTON AND DOUGLAS, 
(glasgoto: JAMES MACLEHOSE. 
(Olfort: J.K.PARKER. 



LEARNING AND WORKING. 

SIX LECTURES 

DELIVERED IN WILLIS'S ROOMS, LONDON, IN JUNE AND JULY, 

1854. 



THE RELIGION OF ROME, 

AND 

ITS INFLUENCE ON MODERN CIVILIZATION. 

EOUR LECTURES 

DELIVERED IN THE PHILOSOPHICAL INSTITUTION 
OF EDINBURGH, IN DECEIVIBER, 1854. 



BY 



FREDERICK DENISON MAURICE, M.A. 

CHAPLAIN OP Lincoln's inn. 



MACMILLAN & CO. 

1855. 






Gift 

John Meigs 

P. 28 04. 



TO 

JOHN MALCOLM LUDLOW, ESQ. 

barrister, lincoln's ink 

My dear Friend, 

A LETTER, Avhich I received from you 
early in the year 1848, when you had seen Paris 
immediately after the expulsion of the Orleans 
family, had a very powerful effect upon my thoughts 
at the time, and has given a direction to them ever 
since. I understood from it, better than I had 
ever done before, how hollow that material civiliza- 
tion was, of which Louis Philippe had been the 
great promoter in Prance, and which we had been 
well inclined to adopt and to worship in England. 
I felt, far more than I had ever done before, how 
much it was the duty of every man, but, above all, 



VI DEDICATION. 

of every clergyman, to strive that the principle and 
power of Christian civilization, which is not based 
upon selfishness, which does not make the accu- 
mulation of material treasures or the increase of 
material enjoyments its main objects, might be 
recognised in the past history of Europe, and 
especially of our own country, — might influence 
and determine its future condition. We knew well 
how little you and I could do to counteract the 
evil, or bring forth the good, that is working in our 
time. But we knew also, that what we could do, 
we were bound to do. And I believe that in 
looking back upon the seven years that have elapsed 
since, we have both often felt bitter self-reproach, 
in considering how much more even we might 
have done, if we had followed the light which was 
granted us, to prevent the blessing of God's great 
judgments from being lost to our country, — how 
much we have shared in the sin of the rulers 
who, while those judgments were in the earth, 
did not learn righteousness, but returned, after a 
moment of terror, to their crooked ways. Never- 
theless, I can truly say, that not only every task 



DEDICATION. Vll 

in which we have been engaged together, but that 
every sermon or lecture that I have dehvered in ) 
the exercise of my own vocation, ahnost every 
thought I have thought, has been shaped and 
coloured by the conviction which you helped to . 
awaken in me. 

Amidst many differences of opinion about the 
course which Christian civilization took in former 
days, and respecting that direction which is most 
suitable for our age, we have agreed, I think I 
may say it confidently, in one or two practical 
conclusions. We have neither of us ever doubted 
that the whole country must look for its bless- 
ings through the elevation of its Working Class, 
that we must all sink if that is not raised. We 
have never dreamed that that class could be bene- 
fited, by losing its working character, by acquiring 
habits of ease or self-indulgence. We have rather ( 
thought that all must learn the dignity of labour \ 
and the blessing of self-restraint. We could not 
talk to suffering men of intellectual or moral im- 
provement, without first taking an interest in their 
physical condition and their ordinary occupations; 



Till DEDICATION. 



but we felt that any interest of this kind would be 
utterly wasted, that it would do harm and not good, 
if it were not the means of leading them to regard 
themselves as human beings made in the image of 
God. We have never thought that we could help 

/ them to be individually wise or individually good, 
if we forgot that they were social beings, bound to 

/ each other by the ties of family, neighbourhood, 
country, and by a common humanity. We have 
never thought that we could make them understand 
what that common humanity means, or even what 
is implied in any of those subordinate relations, 
unless we could speak to them of a Son of Man in 
whom they have a common interest. We have 
believed that in order to do that, we must go deeper 
still, that the Son of Man must be the Son of 
God, that there is no Brotherhood for human beings 
if there is not a common Fatherhood. 

These thoughts are so familiar to you, and to 
all with whom I am in the habit of conversing, 
that you would not suppose it possible for me to 
conceal them, on whatever topic I was speaking 
or writing. They present themselves, not very 



DEDICATION. IX 

obtrusively, in this volume. But you will feel at 
once that tliey lie at the ground of everything 
which is contained in it. They connect together 
two sets of Lectures, which were delivered for 
very different purposes, to very different audiences, 
but which, it seems to me, bring out two aspects 
of the same subject. 

The first set has reference to the Working-men's 
College, in which I have the honour and satisfac- 
tion to be a fellow-labourer with you. After we 
had laid our plan, you and others thought it 
would be desirable that I should state it and 
explain it, not only to the Working-people, (which 
I did afterwards in an Inaugural Lecture,) but 
to such an audience as was likely to meet at 
Willis's Rooms. Addressing myself to such per- 
sons, I was naturally anxious to show that we 
were engaged in no novel experiment; that we 
were carrying out a principle which had been 
recognised in all periods of our history, and of 
the history of modern Europe ; that to the acknow- 
ledgment of it we owed most of the education 
and civilization which the upper and middle classes 



\ 



X DEDICATION. 

of England possessed; tliat the forgetfulness and 
denial of it was not merely leading to tlie ruin 
of the loAver classes, but would end in the ruin 
of all ; that the humane education of om^ Colleges 
will become inhuman, narrow, worthless, if we do 
not recognise the most precious subjects of edu- 
cation as those which are common to men; that 
the difficulties which hinder the union of Learning 
with manual Work, are difficulties which must be 
faced, because they interfere with the freedom, 
order, civilization of England now and in the 
times to come. This, with a general outline of 
our own particular plan, and a few hints as to 
the feasibility of it in other places besides the one 
we have chosen for our experiment, and in other 
hands than ours, forms the material of the first 
six Lectm^es. 

The title of the other four was determined by 
some Edinbrn-gh friends who did me the honour 
of asking me to appear in the same rooms in 
which Mr. Ruskin delivered his Lectm^es on Archi- 
tecture, and our friend Kingsley his on Alexandria. 
It was a distinction and a misfortune to follow 



DEDICATION. XI 

sucli men ; and the ' Religion of Rome ' is pro- 
bably a less inviting topic than that which it had 
fallen to the lot of either of them to discuss. 
But I was thankful for the selection, because it 
led me more earnestly to meditate on that other 
principle of Christian civilization to which I have 
alluded, and to see how it is implied in the exist- 
ence of modern society. Whatever there was 
mighty in the Roman institutions, whatever there 
was sincere and earnest in the Roman religion, 
had its basis, I believe, in the fatherly authority. 
That was the truth to Avhich the Republic owed 
its greatness. It lasted on in strange alliance with 
a principle which was always contradicting it in 
the Empire. Polytheism overlaid it, but could not 
stifle it. The loss of it was the decline and fall of 
Rome. Cliristianity came in, to place it on its 
true and eternal foundation, to make it prac- 
tical for mankind. Because the Greek and Asiatic 
cities never took hold of it, their civilization, after 
trying to unite with Christianity, perished along 
with their Christianity. The civilization of Western 
Europe has depended upon it, has expressed it in 



Xll DEDICATION. 

every name, institution, revolution, — in the Roman 
Bishops Avho assumed to be the fathers of Chris- 
tendom, — in the German reverence for the family, 
which rose up against them. To assert a divine, 
true Fatherhood, in place of the paternal tyrannies 
which have counterfeited it, must, I conceive, be 
the work of those who would educate and civilize 
the nations in the Avay in which they never have 
been educated and civilized, and never can be, by 
those who merely seek, even with the utmost 
skill, to cultivate their material prosperity, at the 
expense of their inward life. 

I hope this statement will remove something of 
the natural surprise which you expressed, when 
I told you that I meant to combine these courses 
of Lectures in one volume. There are other 
bonds of connexion between them, in my mind, 
of a more sad and sacred kind. Both alike were 
delivered in a year which will be memorable as 
one of suffering, honour, and disgrace in our 
national annals. Both of them are to me most 
deeply associated with personal affections and 
personal sorrows. Since I began to prepare these 



DEDICATION. Xlll 

Lectures for tlie press, one who listened mtli tlie 
most cordial sympathy to the first course, who 
would have been the best judge of the second, — 
one from whom I learned more than from almost 
any, and who especially taught me how possible 
it is to unite vehement and earnest feeling, and 
an extreme dislike of eclectical accommodations 
with an abhorrence of party names and narrow- 
ness, — has ended his work upon earth, has be- 
gun, as I believe, freer and nobler works, more 
helpful to us here, than any which were possible 
whilst he w^as amongst us. No one took a deeper 
interest in our College, or hoped more from it. 
More recently a member of our own Council has 
been taken from us ; one very dear to you and dear 
to me, to whom men of science looked for great 
discoveries in the study to which he was sacri- 
ficed ; who, we knew, had aims which no physical 
science could satisfy. In our College and in all 
our tasks, may we work as those who are cheered J 
on by the voices of invisible friends ! And 
when the clouds that overhang our country 
are thickest, and men who are worthy to be 



xiv DEDICATION. 

trusted appear to be the fewest, may we be able 
to hope that God will do His own work, and out 
of those who are lowest in human eyes, — our 
common people, — will raise up citizens that will be 
fit to live and die for England, if not to rule 
her. 

Ever yom* affectionate Eriend, 

E. D. Maurice. 



PEEFACE. 



The Working-men's College, in Red Lion Square, 
wliicli the first six Lectures in this volume were in- 
tended to announce, was opened at the beginning of 
last November. About 140 pupils entered the dif- 
ferent classes. The entire number has not varied 
much in the second term. The classes which were 
most frequented in the first term, were those on Algebra 
and Arithmetic, the English Grammar class, the Draw- 
ing class, and the Bible class. The class on Geometry 
was well attended. Those on Politics, Geography, 
History, and certain parts of Practical Jurisprudence, 
attracted a few students, whose diligence compensated 
for the smallness of their numbers. Classes on Me- 
chanics and Astronomy had some pupils in the last 
term, none in this, chiefly because the teachers evinced 
a great desire that their pupils should have a previous 
training in Mathematics. The lecturer on the human 
frame, who had no pupils in the first term, has three 
in this. Classes have been opened since Christmas 
in French and Latin, which have been very popular. 
An Evening Adult School, to prepare pupils for the 
College in reading, writing, and arithmetic, is in- 
creasing in numbers every week. 



XVI PREFACE. 

Whether the partial success which we have to be 
thankful for, is to disappear, or to be permanent ; 
whether the pupils are to feel that they are really 
members of a College united together for high ends 
by other than mercenary bonds ; whether they shall 
feel that they are learning principles, instead of merely 
acquiring a few scraps of miscellaneous information, 
must depend mainly upon the teachers, upon the prin- 
ciples which govern their thoughts and acts, upon the 
fellowship and mutual understanding which there is 
among them. Since these Lectm^es were delivered, 
some have joined our body, whose cooperation we had 
no right to count upon, but who have given us their 
most cordial and persevering assistance. Mr. Ruskin 
has procm*ed for our Drawing class a reputation that 
has been reflected on the whole society, of which it 
forms a most important part. I would not insult him, 
or any of my colleagues, by expressing any wonder or 
gratitude that they have undertaken tasks, which, I am 
sure, bring the most abundant reward with them ; but 
I do thank them, one and all, for giving the best 
pledge which they could give of zeal in the cause of 
the Working-men, in that they have not shrunk from 
associating themselves with a person from whom many 
of them differ widely in opinion, and whose name can 
bring them nothing but discredit with the world. 

My only claim to be the temporary guide of men 
who are my superiors in nearly every accomplishment, 
is, that I am a little older than any of them, and 
that circumstances have given me a more lengthened, 
though certainly not a more honourable, acquaintance 



PREFACE. XVll 

with Colleges of one class and another, than has fallen 
to their lot. It liappens, by a strange accident, that 
I have been a member of both onr Universities, — 
that I resided at both for a considerable time as 
an Undergraduate, — and that, therefore, though I 
may have had less opportunity of intercourse with the 
eminent Doctors in them than many, I have been 
brought into close contact with different classes of the 
younger men, and with some of those whose thoughts 
were most stirring and characteristic of the times. 
Afterwards I had the honour of being connected, for 
thirteen years, with a College established especially for 
the benefit of the Middle- classes in London and in the 
country generally, — and that in two capacities, as a 
teacher of those who were preparing themselves for 
the larger Universities, or for the business of the 
world, and as a teacher of those who were destined to 
be parochial Clergymen, generally in poor and humble 
neighbourhoods. Now, though it is quite possible 
to have passed through this discipline without being 
the least qualified for the very responsible work of 
directing the studies of a body of Working-men, 
my friends may, perhaps, be excused for setting it 
off against deficiencies in other respects, and I for 
supposing that such a preparation is not given one for 
nothing, and that he who has received it is bound 
to consider how he may best tm'n it to account. 

That all the gifts Avhich any have received through 
one instrumentality or another, all general knowledge, 
all professional knowledge, — and that which we may be 
rich in if we are poor in these, experience of our own 

h 



XVlll PREFACE. 

failures and errors, of tlie wrongs we have done, of 
the good we have missed, — should be turned to the 
service of that class which is, indeed, not a class, but 
which represents the stuff of humanity after class dis- 
tinctions have been removed from it, — in which lie the 
germs of the worst evil, and of the best good, that is 
in any of the classes, — the worst evils of which are 
rarely to bear fruit, the best good of which may be, by 
God's grace, made more productive than any seeds which 
were sown in any past generations have proved to be : — 
this is the doctrine that I have maintained in the Lec- 
tures on Learning and Working, and which I trust 
also will receive illustration from those on the Old and 
Modern Civilization, though they were delivered in 
another country and for another purpose. I have 
referred continually to the older Universities, because 
it seems to me that they are passing through a crisis, 
which will decide whether they are to perish, or to 
become immeasurably greater blessings to the nation 
than they have ever been ; and that the first of these 
results will be inevitable, if they attach a vulgar, exclu- 
sive, caste signification to the divine, humane, physical 
lore which it is their function to diffuse ; that they may 
be certain of obtaining the second, if they feel that 
their business is to awaken in the noble, in the scholar, 
and in the peasant, that manhood which each loses 
when it does not recognise the presence of it in the 
other. We ask them to aid in delivering us from 
the cold hard officiality which is cramping all our 
energies, destroying all our hearts, and which the 
modem plans for improving official promotions and 



PREFACE. XIX 

removing corruptions, unless they are sustained by 
some better and purer influences, will, I fear, ratlier 
foster than check. It will avail nothing to offer prizes 
to men of all conditions : such a scheme may create 
a race of nimble clerks, it will form no seers and 
statesmen, — if you do not set before the people of 
England some standard of worth, such as no prizes 
ever taught them to contemplate, — if you do not offer 
them some sincere knowledge, such as prizes often 
tempt them to exchange for what is most glossy and 
superficial. Let the skilful quill-driver have his reward, 
(indeed, who has more rewards already?) but if we 
want to create heroes, or to save them from perishing 
when we have them, let those who used to boast that 
they existed to form English gentlemen, show that 
their occupation is not gone ; only that they believe » 
gentleness is not tied to wealth, not even to birth ; / 
that God can cultivate it, and would cultivate it, in the 
collier and the street-sweeper. 

These words are addressed expressly to those, no 
longer young, whom I have known and cared for at 
our Universities, and to those who have taken their 
places there. I am also bound to say something to 
those whom I have myself had a share in educating, 
and to whose kindness I owe more than I can express. 
I have broken a promise in the letter which some of 
them were so good as to draw from me, that I would 
reproduce some fragments of Lectm'es 1 once gave 
them on English Literature ; I believed I should 
keep the spirit of it better, if I could show them 
how they might carry out in practice the principles 



XX PEEFACE. 

which I endeavoured to set forth in those Lectures. 
They had, in my opinion, one merit, and only one. 
They were formed upon the belief that all history 
and all literature exhibit God's education of mankind ; 
that the history and literature of England exhibit the 
education of our people and of ourselves. I enforced 
this principle till T have no doubt my hearers were tired 
of what seemed to them an endless repetition. If, on 
looking back to the time we spent together, they have 
forgiven that fault, and the want of information and 
liveliness which they must have detected since they 
became acquainted with other teachers, it must be 
because they have felt that truth to be one, which how- 
ever it was uttered and expounded, is needful for our 
time, and becomes alive when it is acted out. This 
I am sure is a right judgment ; therefore, if I can help 
them to act, if I can point out to them a course of 
action, I am giving them the old Lectures revised and 
corrected, with the very commentary which they missed 
when they were first delivered. Let them understand 
that God has been educating them to educate their 
brethren of the working-class, and all that they learnt, 
all that they are still learning, all the work of their 
professions or trades, will acquire a new character, will 
be valued as it has never been valued before, will be 
changed from a weight into a power — from the routine 
of a machine, into the onward movement of a spirit. 
These former pupils will recognise in my Edinburgh 
Lectures much of what I was trying to say to them, 
only in a different form, and carried back into the old 
world. I spoke to them of the Divine education which 



PREFACE. XXI 

had been granted to modern Europe. Here I have 
traced this education to the cradle, in which we have 
often wondered that a child, destined to such a great 
inheritance, could have been rocked. If I have shown 
that it was not neglected, but carefully tended even 
then, I may have removed some little perplexity 
from the mind of the modern as well as the classical 
student ; I may have afforded one more illustration of 
the inseparable connexion which there is between their 
respective pursuits. I hope, that in doing so, I may 
have shown why Lectures that bear directly on busi- 
ness should be combined with Lectm'es on a subject 
of scientific inquiry. If the business does not rest on 
scientific truth, it can be good for nothing ; if the science 
does not lead to practice, it cannot deserve its name. 
A College — a Working-men's College especially — ought 
to exist, that it may manifest their essential unity.* 

* It may throw light on some of the statements in the Lectures and 
in this Preface, if I insert the programme of our studies for the last 
Term : — 

TIME. P.M. SUBJECT. TEACHER. 

Sunday . . 8^-10 The Gospel of St. John .... The Principal. 
Monday . . 8 — 9 The Structure and Functions of 

the Human Body Mr. Walsh. 

,, 8 — 9 Algebra,^ {Section 2) Mr. Litchfield. 

„ 8 — 9 Natural Philosophy : Mechanics . Mr. Watson. 

„ 9-10 English Political Writers : Six- 
teenth Century The Principal. 

Tuesday . . 8 — 9 Geometry Mr. Hose. 

„ 8 — 9 French M. Talandier. 

„ 9-10 English Grammar, (Section 2) . Mk. Furnivall. 

Wednesday. 8 — 9 Political Economy Mb. Neale. 

„ 8 — 9 Algebra,^ (Section 2) Mr. Litchfield. 

^ The treatment of the subject in this Section will embrace the prin- 
ciples and practice of Arithmetic. 



XXU PREFACE. 

TIME. P.M. SUnJECT. TEACHER. 

Wednesday. 8 — 9 Natural Philosophy: Astronomy. Mii. Locock. 
„ 9-10 Latin Mr. Irving. 

TMr. Ruskin, 
Tltwrsday . 7 — 9 Drawing |Mr. Rohsetti, & 

IMr. Dickinson. 

„ 8 — 9 English Grammar [Section 1) . . Mr. Furnivall. 

,. 8 — 9 Natural Philosophy : Mechanics . Mr. Watson. 

„ 8 — 9 >Sanitary Legislation Mr. Hugiieh. 

„ 9-10 Geometry Mr. Hose. 

„ 9-10 Structure and Derivations of Eng- 
lish Words Mr. Furnivall. 

„ 9-10 The Law of Joint Stock Compa- 
nies Mr. Ludlow. 

Friday . . . 8 — 9 The Geography of England as 

connected with its History . Mr. Brewer. 

„ 8 — 9 French M. Talandier. 

„ 9-10 The Reign of King Richard IL il- 
lustrated by Shakspeare's Play The Principal. 
Satm-day . 8-10 Algebra, {Section 1) Mr. Webtlake. 

It has been arranged that ultimately the College should be divided into 
five classes. The first will consist of the general body of Matriculated 
Students ; the second, of Students who obtain a certificate of compe- 
tency in some one branch of study after they have attended the College 
for four terms; the third, of Associated Students, who shall prove 
that they have a competent knowledge in the principal subjects of our 
teaching, no effort being made to elicit their opinions, but a reasonable 
knowledge of Scripture History, of English History, of the principles 
of English Grammar, and of either Geometry or Algebra, being consi- 
dered indispensable. The fourth class will consist of Fellows, that is, 
of persons chosen out of the Associates, who shall be considered 
morally and intellectually capable of assisting in the education of the 
Students. The fifth class will contain the Council, which it is proposed 
should be recruited from the Fellows, These arrangements may admit 
of modifications ; but they are the basis of a scheme which we trust 
will give solidity and unity to our society. 



CONTENTS. 



LEARNING AND WORKING. 



PAGE 

LECTURE I. — Juvenile and Adult Learning .... 3 



IL — Learning and Leisure 39 

III. — Learning and Money Worship incom- 

tatible 72 

IV.— Learning the Minister of Freedom and 

Order 99 

V. — The Studies in a Working College . . 129 

VI.— The Teachers in a Working College . . 159 

NOTES 192 



XXIV CONTENTS. 



THE RELIGION OF ROME. 



PAGE 

LECTURE L— Rome in its Youth 205 



IL — Rome under Greek Teachers 239 

III. — Rome at the Beginning of the New 

World 275 

IV, — The Influence of Rome and Germany 

upon Modern Europe 311 

NOTES 347 



LEAENING AND WOEKING. 



B 



LECTURE I. 

JUVENILE AND ADULT LEAENING. 

Fifteen years ago I delivered some Lectures in this 
room on the subject of Education. I refer to them that 
I may better explain to you the motives which have 
induced me to commence the present course. 

At that time some earnest men, with one or two of 
whom I had the honour to be acquainted, were striving 
to make the ecclesiastical machinery which they found 
in this country, effectual for the education of its people. 
They believed that that was the design for which it 
existed, and that if it failed of accomplishing that 
design, the Clergy and the laity of the upper classes 
in England were guilty of a sin for which they would 
have to answer. They thought that we had powers to 
do the work, if we knew them and would use them. 
They thought also that no machinery, though it might 
be the best in the world, could be of the least avail, 
if we did not understand that this power was not a 
mechanical but a moral one. I could give very little lielp 
to those who were attempting to carry these convictions 
into practice ; but I fancied that I might be able to 

B 2 



4 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEAENING. [LECT. 

impress tliem on the minds of a few in whom they would 
bear fruit, and that I might perhaps lead those who were 
engaged in a great work to reflect more deeply on the 
principle that was involved in it, so that it should not 
"become, as all work is liable to become, servile drud- 
gery, but should continue intelligent and manly as the 
hearts of those were who had devoted themselves to it. 
As I should not have ventured in 1839^ to discuss 
the principles of Education, unless there had been 
some practical undertaking to which they could be 
applied, and by which they could be tested, so neither 
in tlie year 1854 have I acquired that courage. I 
should be more afraid than I was then of merely laying 
down general maxims upon this subject, because I 
think I know a little, a very little, more of the facts 
with which we have to deal. Now, as before, an experi- 
ment is about to be made, which must be submitted 
to a searching examination, which will be good for 
nothing if it is pursued ever so zealously but not in 
conformity with sound principles. The experiment is 
altogetlier different in kind from that of which I have 
spoken. It does not aim at restoring or invigorating 
an old organization. It does not start from any con- 
sideration respecting the powers of the Church or of 
the State. It does not contemplate men as divided 
from each other by certain circumstances of property 
or position, into rich or poor, or into the upper class, 
the middle class, the lower class. It simply looks at 
the fact, that the great bulk of the people in this 
country, those in whom its strength lies, want an in- 
struction which they have not got. It views them in 



I.] JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. 5 

reference, not to their station "but to tlieir occupations. 
The scheme I speak of, is a College for Working Men. 
A College, that is to say, a society constituted for the 
purpose of communicating and receiving a methodical 
education ; for Worhing-men, that is to say, for grown- 
up people spending their lives in business, not for 
children or boys who are merely preparing themselves 
for business. 

You will perceive at once, that a project of this kind 
is free from some of the difficulties which tormented the 
prosecutors of the other plan at every step. Those 
who attempt to found a Working College will not 
have to ask that revenues which have been turned for 
years or centuries to another use, should be reclaimed to 
theirs. If they succeed at all, tfiey will not be found- 
ing or renewing a charity ; they will be offering that 
wdiich free-men must take and pay for if they wish to 
have it. They avoid the question, wlio may or may 
not provide the education ; assuming that any persons, 
even the most insignificant, may make tlie offer, and 
that the working-men themselves will decide at whose 
hands and under what conditions they will accept it. 
In another respect they resemble their predecessor^.. 
Actual complaints of the inefficiency of our spiritual 
organization, and eager demands that it might be 
destroyed, led them to exclaim, ' Let us try if we 
* cannot turn it to account,' We hear on all sides of 
us lamentations over the moral and intellectual con- 
dition of the Workins: Classes. We are not forcina: 
people's attention upon facts w^hich they have agreed 
to disregard; we are dwelling upon those which a 



6 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. [LECT. 

majority profess to think the most important of all. 
And the scheme itself which we propose has no novelty 
in it. A nnmber of previous experiments have been 
made in the same direction. The effort to provide 
some kind of teaching for working men out of working 
hours, is perhaps the most characteristic effort of this 
time. Nevertheless, I am certain that if these or any 
other considerations lead those who are putting forward 
this plan to fancy that it is an easy one — that the 
objections to it are not deeper and more radical than 
any which can have been raised against the other — they 
have not counted the cost of their undertaking, and 
will have to learn from experience that which they 
might have understood from reflection. 

The first and most fundamental of these objections 
presents itself in this form : ' We find it hard enough 
to satisfy ourselves about the right method of bringing 
up boys and girls. We have been discussing schemes 
of instruction indefatigably. We have our English 
schemes, our French schemes, our German schemes ; 
schemes of Statesmen, schemes of Churchmen, schemes 
of Voluntaries. Almost every town, parish, hamlet, 
has its own scheme. Nearly every man and woman 
has something to say against the scheme of his or her 
neighbour. Those who have been most earnest on the 
subject often begin to be most hopeless of any agree- 
ment upon it, the most discontented with the results 
which they witness. And yet these plans refer to 
those who have as yet no prejudices of their own, who 
are ready to receive impressions, from whom the im- 
pressions they have received may be effaced, for whom 



I.] JUVENILE AND ADULT LEAENING. 7 

* almost any sort of teaching or discipline would seem to 
^ be better than none. And now having failed or 

* succeeded very imperfectly, with these, you propose to 
^ try your hand upon those who are hardened by use and 

* custom, whose facility of receiving what you would 

* impart has been diminished by every year in which 
' they have been without it, whose power and inclination 
' to resist that which you would impart has been in- 

* creased by every year which has given a hard definite 
^ mould to their characters and purposes ; who, in addition 
' to all the obstructions which meet you in the case of 

* the education of children from the contradictions of sects 

* and classes, oppose the weight of uncultivated intellects 

* and of stubborn, impracticable wills. Because you 

* have been wearied with the footmen, you would contend 
' with the horsemen. You are nearly in despair of 

* making your children into men, and therefore you 
'- would attempt the promising task of making your men 
^ into children.' 

I state the objection as strongly as I can, because I 
feel it to be most strong. No theories, no calculations of 
what might be good for our people, can overthrow it ; 
facts, I think, may shoAV that it must be encountered, 
however miglity it is. The difficulties, you say, which 
beset us in the teaching of boys and girls are serious 
enough. Yes ; and are they not of this kind ? Do you 
not find that when you have got your schoolroom built 
according to the most approved model, and the system 
of instruction, whatever it be, set on foot, you cannot 
keep your boys and girls in the schoolroom working 
out this system, after a very early age indeed ? Do you 



8 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. [LECT. 

not find that tlie bribes wliicli you can offer tliem to 
stay are powerless, in comparison with those which lead 
their parents to send them into the field, or into the 
factory, or into service ? Do you not find it the hardest 
of all problems to solve, how you shall influence them 
afterwards? These are not occasional or local grievances; 
you hear of them from the agricultural village and the' 
manufacturing town, from the parish curate and the 
dissenting minister, from the schoolmistress as much as 
the schoolmaster. 

I quite admit that the Government measure for the 
encouragement of pupil-teachers has done something, 
and may do more^ to abate this evil. I cannot doubt 
for a moment that that is a step in the right direction. 
It is in that very direction into which I am seeking 
to lead you. It is connected with that valuable move- 
ment for the foundation of training-schools, which arose 
from the discovery that school-houses, school-machinery, 
even a multitude of scholars, are not the things which 
we most want. It belongs to a class of measures which 
involve the princijole, that unless there be an education 
for adults, there will in a short time be none that is 
worth having for children. 

I believe this conclusion is also forced upon us in 
another way. It may be true that we have answered 
all the arguments with which farmers or country-gen- 
tlemen were wont to assail our phantasies about teaching 
the poor. Any one who sets deliberately about the task 
of refuting them may be accused, with great plausibility, 
of fighting with ghosts or windmills. But after all, 
some of these dead arguments start to life again and 



I.] JUVENILE AND ADULT LEArvXIXG. 9 

present themselves in very questionable shapes. ' Your 
' learning,' it was said, ' will not fit boys and girls for 
* doing their work.' We thought the suspicion exceed- 
ingly absurd. But surely we are often obliged to ask 
ourselves when no one is within hearing, Does it? Is 
there any direct and manifest connexion between the 
business of the school and the business of the world, 
between the books and the life ? I trust in many cases 
there is a strong and obvious connexion, one which 
makei5 itself felt in all the doings of the boy or girl who 
come from the school, one which proves that there are 
thoughts in them which, but for that early discipline, 
would never have been awakened. It would be sad 
indeed if one did not believe this. But there is certainly 
an impression abroad which is shared by some of the 
most zealous supporters of popular education, that our 
schools for the poor, whatever other benefits have come 
from them, are not bringing up helpful intelligent 
workers, that from some accident or other their learning 
and work stand altogether apart from each other, so that 
the best scholar may sometimes almost seem to have 
had the faculties dulled and stunted, which he needs for 
the toils in which he must be enirao'ed. If this is the 
case, we ought to know it and confess it. If those who 
prophesied such a result think they have won a triumph, 
by all means let them enjoy it. Not for one single 
instant would we fall back into their habit of thinking, 
because it was grounded upon the assumption that poor 
people were sent into the world to work for them, and 
that all which had to be considered was, how they might 
be made into the handiest tools for their purposes. But 



/ 



10 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. [LECT. 

tliougli we abjure tlieir doctrine, we may turn their 
practical experience to account, so far as it serves for 
rtlie exDOSure and correction of our own mistakes. Q We 
ought freely to admit, that any education which fails to 
make poor men or rich men efficient in action, is an un- 
satisfactory education, — one which needs to be reformed, 
'not only for the sake of its results, but because the 
studies which produce such results cannot themselves 
be sincere and wholesome. } 

But I should be distrustful of this evidence, if it was 
only drawn from the condition of one class in the country. 
I think there are proofs that it has as much to do with 
our highest education as with our lowest. A bill, you 
all know, is now under discussion in Parliament, and is 
likely to become law, which proposes to alter the con- 
stitution of the University of Oxford. The form which 
this proposition has taken, is certainly not that which it 
would have taken tweaity or thirty years ago. Then 
it was supposed that the old Universities required to 
be reformed according to modern maxims ; that they 
ought to abandon as much as possible their original 
character, which was presumed to be a narrow one. 
What has been attempted in this bill, successfully or 
unsuccessfully, has been to restore part of their original 
character which had been lost, to bring back the most 
ancient idea of the University, partly because this was 
also found to be the most comprehensive. This change 
in the direction of our thoughts and plans is owing, I 
conceive, very principally to the writings of an eminent 
Scotchman, Sir W. Hamilton. In his articles in the 
' Edinburgh Review, ' about twenty years ago, he 



I.] JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. 11 

showed very clearly tliat the Universities, properly 
so called, had been merged in the Colleges, — that the 
reform which was most demanded was to restore them 
to life. He endeavoured to support this important doc- 
trine by charges against the conduct of the Colleges, 
some of which, I think, were not supported by evidence, 
and have been disproved by subsequent investigations. 
He appeared to regard the whole scheme of Colleges 
with a suspicion and dislike in which I cannot partici- 
pate. Respect for the name of Baliol, and for the 
benefits which have proceeded out of the society bearing 
that name from the fourteenth century to the present 
day, would alone prevent me from adopting that opinion. 
But this difference does not make me less sensible of the 
obligation under which Sir AV. Hamilton has laid us all, 
by asserting the necessity of giving prominence and effi- 
ciency to the University, and not suiFering the discipline 
of the Colleges, valuable as that may be, to overshadow 
it. It is this consideration which has led many, who 
have exceedingly disliked the thought of legislative 
interference with the bodies from which they have 
derived some of the greatest blessings of their lives, 
to acquiesce in the necessity of the present measure, — 
even to desire that a more comprehensive one had been 
adopted. They have no wish to see the Universities 
adapted to the tastes and notions of the public; they 
would have them correct and expand the public mind, 
not stoop to it. But they feel that their power for this 
purpose has been greatly cramped by the fact that the 
manly adult education which belongs to the University 
has been comparatively forgotten, and an education 



/ 



12 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEAKNING. [LECT. 

wliicli is not clifFerent in kind from the teacliing of the 
grammar-school substituted for it. Thus the Uni- 
versity loses the great influence which it ought to have 
upon the busj and professional life of the country, upon 
its physicians, its merchants, its lawyers, its statesmen. 
If our learned bodies will not reclaim this influence 
for themselves, the legislature must at all hazards re- 
mind them of their duty. The lion may not be the best 
companion for Una, — it would be far better that the 
Red Cross Knight should attend her on her journeys, 
and fight with her enemies ; but if he is seduced from 
his proper function, a rough paw may be necessary to 
open doors that would otherwise be closed, that she 
may be able to sit and teach the savage tribes. 

Here, then, is adult education asserting its rights, 
and proving its necessity, by the experience of our rich 
men and of our scholars, just as we found it doing in 
the schools of the poor by our inability to make the 
education of the young effectual without it. And the 
peculiar circumstances of this University Reform, — the 
undoubted evidence which has been produced that it is 
a re-form in the strict sense of the word, a restoration, 
not an innovation, — has forced the inquiry upon us. 
Whether adult education, in the history of Great Britain 
and of Europe generally, followed or preceded the educa- 
tion of the young ? It is this question which I propose 
to examine to-day. Another, which is closely involved 
with this, and which is even more necessary for the 
object I have in view, Whether leisure or work is the 
proper and ordained ally of learning ? I reserve for our 
next meeting. . 



ij JUVENILE AND ADULT LEAENING. 13 

Possibly some light might be thrown upon this 
subject if one knew more of those 'schools that were 
established by the Eomans in the different provinces of 
their empire, a few notices of which may be found in 
M. Guizot's ' History of French Civilization.' But I 
do not think we should gain much from this informa- 
tion. Evidently those schools were labouring to keep 
up a kind of lore, which was nearly worn out and had 
become useless. The study of rhetoric, which was 
worth something while there was a Forum to practise it 
in, became utterly weak and inane when it was merely 
to be exhibited in school-exercises and declamations. 
How unsatisfying it was to any ardent and earnest spirit, 
we may learn from the account which St. Augustine 
gives of his own experiences of the African schools, 
comparing it with his intense interest and joy when he 
lighted, in his private reading, upon one of Cicero's 
philosophical treatises. 

These schools gave way before those which were not 
merely Christianised, as some of them must have been 
in the ' later days of the empire, but which had a 
distinctly Christian foundation. We cannot separate 
these from the general history of the people among 
whom they were established. When — to take an 
instance which is familiar to us, and therefore the best 
we can find — the Christian Missionaries came to the 
Anglo-Saxons, they addressed themselves to the kings 
and queens, they appealed to the domestic affections 
and the national instincts which were always latent in 
the Saxons. To these all their doctrine and all their 
polity attached itself. Through these they led the 



14 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. [lECT. 

tnrbiTlent conquerors and lords of the sea and land, to 
feel that there was an invisible world about them which 
thej could not conquer with their swords or traverse 
with their ploughs and ships; the world which had 
mixed so strangely in all their old songs and traditions 
with the visible and palpable one, which had before 
seemed a dark abyss, or a region in which giants were 
contending for the mastery, which was now announced 
to them as a quiet home and dwelling-place whither 
the spirits of men might fly from the noise and turmoil 
around them. The schools which rose up with such 
marvellous rapidity after the island had once been 
subdued by Cliristianity, were the results of this feeling 
and reflected it. They were places to which the poorest 
peasant might resort. But he went there on the con- 
dition of becoming a scholar. He was to devote 
himself to a new life. Tlie invisible was to be his 
occupation ; all his social economy had reference to 
that. It might be part of his business in the monastery 
to till the gromid, to work with his hands — even an 
enjoined and necessary part of it. He might be doing 
much to improve agriculture and cultivate various arts, 
for whicli all men would afterwards be the better. But 
he was felt to have different objects from the kings and 
warriors, however they might confess his faith and 
receive his admonitions. They belonged to an outward 
circle, he to an inward one. 

It would be the greatest mistake to suppose that this 
difference lay merely in the fact, that he was a student 
of theology, or that he practised certain religious 
exercises. These did not separate him so much from 



I.] JUVENILE AND ADULT LEAENING. 15 

tlie surrounding world — for tliey were acknowledged to 
be in some sense necessary for all men — as tlie fact that 
he was a student of arithmetic, of geometry, of music, 
of astronomy, of logic, and of rhetoric. The circle of 
studies which became the recognised one in our Saxon 
schools, had not originally been derived from an eccle- 
siastical source ; we can trace it back very clearly to 
Boethius, that eminent statesman in the reign of 
Theodoric, who is often called the last of the classical 
Romans, and whose claims to the place which he has 
sometimes obtained among Catholic writers, are exceed- 
ingly doubtful. No doubt, parts of this course of 
teaching, the study of music especially, had a close ' 
affinity with the worship of the church, and was 
sustained by it. But the scheme of studies can only be 
looked upon as having been adopted by the ecclesiastics, 
not as having been suggested by them. The student 
life could never have established itself in a wild, 
warring people, except through their agency; the 
schools would not have been felt to have any meaning, 
if there had not been a divine atmosphere about them. 
But it was as schools that they stood in such sharp 
opposition to the ordinary occupations of men. 

I should not have thought it necessary to make these 
remarks, which will seem to many very obvious, except 
for the purpose of calling your attention to tlie fact, that 
the education which was fii'st established in our country, 
was not elementary education, but what we should 
consider now the reverse of it. Those subjects which 
we should call the professorial subjects, those which 
belong to science as such, were those from which all 



16 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. [LECT. 

other teacliing took its commencement. This is true 
of every subject which I have mentioned. You may 
suppose, perhaps, that Arithmetic is an exception, that 
it appertains to an inferior class of subjects, adapted to 
the comprehension of the young. But if you adopt 
this notion, you are looking at arithmetic in another 
way than that in which these schools looked at it. 
Arithmetic is with them not identical with figures or 
counting ; it is a branch of philosophy. If I were to 
read to you the introduction to the treatise of Boethius 
upon it, you would think that I was carrying you into 
the very depths of metaphysics. I am not going to 
impose any such penance upon you; but I wish you 
to perceive from what point it was that Britain, as well 
as every other country, started in its intellectual pro- 
gress. We might have supposed that there would have 
been a gradual ascent towards this kind of erudition ; 
but it is not the fact that there was. However unsatis- 
factorily they might resolve the problems of physics 
or dialectics, they entered upon them, even upon the 
most difficult of them, from the first. 

You may ask, ' But what then did they teach their 
' boys, and how did they teach them ? ' The question is 
a fair one, and we can give a tolerably satisfactory answer 
to it. There came a time of which we have some right 
to be proud, v/hen a scholar of York was to help forward 
the instruction and civilization of the Continent. The 
story of the aid which Alcuin gave to Charlemagne in 
the education of himself and of the young princes, is 
familiar to many of you through M. Guizot's ' History 
of French Civilization,' and through Sir James 



I.] JUVENILE AXD ADULT LEAENING. 17 

Stephen's ' Lectures on the History of France.' I do 
not think either ot those eminent writers would allow 
us to claim for our countryman the whole, or the 
principal part, of the merit which helongs to the cate- 
chetical system of instruction, to which he subjected the 
monarch himself as well as the lads who were assigned 
him as his pupils. They would say that the exceeding 
activity of Charlemagne's own mind, his long training 
in affairs, his practical sense, obliged the tutor to adopt 
a more simple experimental method than he would 
have fallen into, if he had been lecturing in an academy. 
I quite accept this statement, and believe that this 
interesting chapter in the history of learning is one 
which brings out forcibly the truth, that a right 
education is the result of the collision and conflict 
between the practical intellect and the meditative 
intellect, that no true spark comes forth till the one is 
struck by tlie other. But though Alcuin may have 
found out something like tlie true method of teaching 
in this way, you must not suppose that his subjects vrere 
different from those of his contemporaries. He reasons 
with his boys about dialectics, and about the principles 
and grounds of philosophy; lie talks with the con- 
queror of the Saxons, the wearer of the iron crown of 
Lombardy, about quantities and qualities, and contraries, 
and opposites. 

There is however a period far dearer than this to the 
hearts of Englishmen, far more closely connected with 
their moral and intellectual growth. It was ordained, 
mercifully ordained, that that Latin cultivation which 
the Christian monks had introduced, with all the 



18 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEAENIXG. [LECT. 

premature fruits wliicli had grown out of it, should be 
swept away. The schools and monasteries, for the sake 
of which so many a mailed monarch had deserted his 
proper duties, and in which he had sought an ignoble 
rest and an ungodly repentance, were destroyed by the 
pirates of the North. Alfred, for his own good, and for 
the good of the land, was not suffered to know any 
Latin lore till he was twelve years old. He was 
brought up on the food which was fittest to make him 
a great Saxon king, the songs and ballads of his fore- 
fathers. So trained, his learning came to him when he 
wanted it ; he understood what it was worth and why 
it was given him. For the first time one perceives a 
real Saxon education in the land, an education carried 
on not first of all by monks, though they might be 
instruments in communicating it, but by a king, trained 
in business and in adversity, w^ho could appreciate books 
because he knew men, and v/ho could tell what books 
men had need of. He had scholars about him, possibly 
one eminent and profound metaphysician ; but his own 
sound practical sense kept them in order, and turned 
them to account, forcing them, whether they liked it or 
110, to use their wisdom for the culture of the nation. 
This example stands out clear and bright in our annals, 
a witness of much that was to be done hereafter, and 
of the way in which it was to be done. But Alfred's, 
like Alcuin's, was adult teaching. 

Alfred's books were translations from the Latin. 
In the time which immediately followed his, the 
national spirit must have begun to utter itself in free 
and original songs, such as had not been produced for a 



I.] JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. 19 

long time, perhaps not since the conquest of Britain. 
Then came the reaction. The Latin, or ecclesiastical 
learning, which had probably been too much kept 
down, asserted its supremacy under Dunstan, and tried 
to crush everything but itself. There must have been 
an uneasy conflict between the native wisdom and the 
foreign, between the warrior and the priest, till the 
beginning of the eleventh century. Then began, here 
and throughout Europe, the ascendancy of those mighty 
Normans whose old spirit had been so curiously pre- 
served amidst their Gallic civilization, who were ready 
for the wildest enterprises, who were capable of the 
strictest organization, who had just enough of national 
feeling to make them the effectual agents in subduing 
all nations. These men w^ere not only to establish 
kingdoms, vanquish infidels, frame doomsday-books ; 
they were also to organize the monastic life, to establish 
the Latin and ecclesiastical culture, to reduce the 
schools as much as the world under discipline. In 
Eadmer's life of Anselm there are some curious and 
interesting stories respecting the education of chil- 
dren in the monastery of Bee, indicating the sen- 
sible notions of Anselm concerning the treatment ot 
them. But the Norman discipline was essentially one 
for m.en, and not for children. Their whole school 
system w^as one which appealed to the faculties and 
thoughts of men, even while it stood furthest off from 
the ordinary business of their lives, even when it 
seemed to have least to do with their human feelings. 

The twelfth century opens a new chapter in the 
history of education. The schools had hitherto been 

c 2 



20 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEAENING. [LECT. 

inseparably connected witli the monasteries. The or- 
Sfanizins: mind of the Norman had reduced all branches 
of thought and learning, even more completely than 
before, under the dominion of theology ; and the learned 
life was regarded as part of the religious life. The 
great prominence which was given to the latter by. 
St. Bernard, in the institutions which he founded and 
superintended, led to the undervaluing of the former. 
The venerable Peter of Clugny still asserted its rights 
in his society. But soon the separation makes itself 
manifest. Bodies came into existence for the pursuit of 
some special study or faculty, such as jm-isprudence or 
theology, or for several united together. These bodies 
are first formed, perhaps, through the popularity of 
some particular lecturer ; they soon acquire a corporate 
character; they are recognised as Universities, or cor- 
porations, for carrying on studies, as there were other 
corporations for carrying on trades. It may be sup- 
posed that now at length we have found places de- 
signed especially for the education of the young. Far 
from it. There were, as I have said, schools for boys 
in the monasteries, though the idea of the school was 
not deduced from them. University teaching is alto- 
gether removed from any such association. The lec- 
turers address themselves expressly to that dialectical 
lore which we are wont to regard as entirely removed 
not only from boyish but from human sympathies. 

There is apparently warrant for that impression ; we 
might found upon it the conclusion that this teaching 
can only have attracted a few people of a peculiar cast 
of character. How marvellous, then, must it be to hear 



I.] JUVENILE AND ADULT LEAENING. 21 

wliat took place when the young Breton, Peter Abelard^ 
was lecturing in Paris. Perhaps I might hope in the 
course of a few days to make every one here understand 
what the subject was on which he v/as disputing. 
' I undertook/ he says, ' by most satisfactory argu- 
' ments to induce my old master, William, the arch- 
^ deacon of Paris, to abandon that sentiment of his 
' about Universals ; for he would maintain that the same 
' whole thing dwells essentially in each individual thing.' 
Well, to hear the unfortunate William of Paris con- 
fomided upon the doctrine which he had embraced on 
this subject, such crowds gathered together as no 
Parisian singer or actress ever yet succeeded in assem- 
bling. And when in a later period of Abelard's life, 
after he had experienced the tremendous temptations of 
popularity, as well as the dreariness and sinking of 
heart which come to a man who has no actual ties 
to his fellow-beings ; after he had sought an escape 
from that dreariness by involving one much brighter 
and nobler than himself in a hopeless sorrow ; when, 
after this, he returned to a certain cell for the purpose 
of lecturing upon theology, there rushed such a multi- 
tude of scholars to him, that, to use his own language, 
all the country round did not suffice to furnish them 
with dwellings, nor the soil with food. The whole 
story sounds like the most incredible romance ; yet the 
evidence for it is clear and undoubted. Men and women 
in the twelfth century did not merely run to hear a 
powerful and popular preacher like St. Bernard ; they 
not only could be dissolved in tears, when he spoke 
in a language which they did not understand; they 



22 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. [LECT. 

were also drawn hj the strangest sympathy to the 
teachings of a subtle logician, and that not only in his 
earlier days, when he was young and handsome, and 
untainted in reputation, but after he had fallen into 
moral disgrace and was suspected of heresy. 

The life of Abelard shows us, I think, that what we 
call the discussions of the schools, though they may be 
very unsatisfying to the deeper spirit of human beings, 
have yet something in them which may excite very 
strongly the intellects and even the passions of men, 
and that the mere business of the world does not furnish 
an adequate substitute for them. The next century 
records phenomena in the history of education which 
are scarcely less remarkable. It was the century in which 
the Mendicant Orders arose, the century in which Francis 
and Dominic appealed directly to the hearts of the most 
miserable people in Europe, presenting Christianity to 
them as especially meant for them. Now this pecu- 
liarly popular movement, which was so much mightier 
than all the policy of Innocent III. had been in break- 
ing down the distinctions of nations, and in establishing 
the papal supremacy over them, was, in its issue, the 
great instrument of revolutionising the scholarship of 
Em'ope, which you might have fancied that its preachers 
would have disregarded. It was not only over the 
hearts of guilty or sorrowing men or women that these 
orders established their throne. Before they had existed 
half a century, they had fought for dominion in the 
universities, and had won it. They had succeeded in 
organizing the -whole learning of these universities, in 
establishing what we emphatically call the scholastic 



I.] JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. 23 

system, and in producing tlie most complete sclieme of 
thought upon all possible subjects which the world ever 
has seen or ever will see. Those who believe that a 
complete system is the thing that man wants, should 
fall down and worship the books of Thomas Aquinas, 
for they will surely find nothing that is so worthy of 
their idolatry. If this is the climax of education, it 
reached its climax in the thirteenth century. But in 
that century men began to discover that they wanted 
something else than this — something entirely different 
from this. They did not wait to be told that secret by 
later times ; it was found out then. Roger Bacon, the 
Franciscan, was unwinding in his laboratory a great 
part of that web which Thomas Aquinas, the Domi- 
nican, had been weaving in his study. He was show- 
ing that physical science, at all events, is occupied 
primarily with facts, not with the words that describe 
facts. He was conspiring with other teachers — some of 
them of his own order — to suggest the thought that 
moral science may be in the same predicament. And 
there was a vehement reaction against both the orders, 
arising from national feelings which were beginning to 
express themselves in a national language, that did 
more than all other influences together to prevent the 
schools from becoming omnipotent. 

Thus far we have had only occasional glimpses of 
any distinct education for the boy. He has been bred 
in the monastery; the studies which belonged to his 
elders have in some way or other been communicated 
to him ; but the schools have certainly not existed 
primarily for his sake : the name suggested to our 



24 JUVENILE AKD ADULT LEARNING. [lECT. 

ancestors a tlioiiglit most unlike that which it ordinarily 
suggests to ITS. In the period upon which we now 
enter, the school in our sense, the school as identified 
with the training of the young, comes into sight. I 
wish you to consider how our Grammar-schools grew 
up, how they acquired such dignity and importance in 
our social economy, in what relation they stand to the 
older education. But we cannot at once enter upon 
that subject. The Universities as such, the Universities 
as schools in quite a different sense from this, must still 
fix our attention for a few moments. They of course 
were the homes of the Latin lore, while that great 
English movement to which I was alluding Y/as going 
on in the heart of the middle or trading class of the 
country. But though this is true on the whole, it would 
be a great mistake to suppose that the Universities vrere 
exempt from their share in that movement — nay, that 
they did not furnish some of the great leaders in it. 
There was an old scholastical quarrel with the friars, 
which was contemporary witli the national quarrel, 
and which often mingled with it. The orders had in- 
truded themselves into the schools. But that vulgar 
talent which enabled them to appeal to the worst feel- 
ings of the mob, was, especially when they became 
degenerate, and their higher principles had decayed, by 
far their most effective instrument. The earnest student 
would be disgusted by these exhibitions ; he would 
often transfer his disgust from them to the elaborate 
subtleties which he found the friars inventing when 
they assumed their other character. Sprung himself 
from the people, he would appeal to the homely sense of 



I.] JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. 25 

the English people, to their business-like habits, against 
the circulators of the popular legends. As a teacher 
in the schools, he would turn to the Bible as an escape 
from the intricacies of its commentators. The position 
of WyclifFe, first in Oxford, afterv^-ards as a parish- 
priest in Lutterworth, explains the way in which these 
different tendencies worked together. His translation of 
the Bible, the only really important work in wliich lie was 
engaged, embodies both, and shows us how impossible 
it was that the new English practical feeling could have 
grown up Avithout the Latin culture, how certain it was 
they would stand out in fierce opposition to each other, 
how surely they would, some time or other, be forced to 
coalesce, how surely those who were most possessed by 
the one temper would often exhibit in themselves the 
influences of the other. 

I have spoken of a strife between the Universities as 
such and the Orders as such. I conceive that there was 
a very strong feeling in the thirteenth century that the 
University, however the teachers in it might be mem- 
bers of orders, was to preserve itself distinct from the 
orders, to show that it had a function altogether differ- 
ent from theirs. But, if it was to maintain this position, 
the University must have a social life of its own. It 
could only resist the monasteries, if it could provide its 
scholar with an intercourse and fellowship which re- 
sembled that of the monasteries. To this impulse, as 
well as to a strong local feeling, a desire to connect the 
towns and counties which were dear to them with tlie 
learning which belonged to the whole land, may be 
traced the foundation of the Colleges which began to 



26 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEAENING. [lECT. 

grow up at tliis period in our Universities, and wliicli 
are truly said to constitute the most purely English 
element in tliem. Three of those in the University of 
Oxford — University, Baliol, and Merton Colleges — 
Ibelong to the thirteenth century. The name of the first, 
the wills and statutes of the founders of all three, show 
that they acknowledged the existence of an elder and 
larger society, of which they were to form a part, which 
they were never intended to svfallow up in themselves, 
the characteristic studies of which their fellows were to 
pursue and to teach. There were also the signs of 
those other intentions to which I have alluded ; but I 
do not perceive, thus far, that the training of the young 
is at all a principal object. The fellows of University 
College were to study divinity, or the decretals. The 
sixteen scholars whom the widow of John Baliol 
settled in a tenement in Oxford Avere to pray for the 
souls of her husband, or ancestors, or children. Of 
Walter de Merton^s society the University Commis- 
sioners say expressly, that it was not bound by the 
monastic vows, that it belonged to none of the reli- 
gious orders, that his object was to counteract the 
influence of the regular clergy, especially of the ]Men- 
dicant Friars. 

In the fourteenth century, the case is different. The 
University Commissioners say, evidently with the great- 
est truth, that the foundation of ISTew College was a new 
era in Oxford history. In fact, if we wish to understand 
this important stage in our subject, we cannot do better 
than consider the character and objects of its eminent 
founder, William of Wvkeham. There is some diffi- 



I.] JUVENILE AND ADULT LEAENING. 27 

ciilty, however, in arriving at a riglit judgment of liim. 
The University Commissioners say, ' that he gave a more 

* ecclesiastical, or rather monastic, character to his foun- 
' elation, than had belonged to any previous one. The 

* very character of his buildings,' they add, ' secluded and 

* gloomy outwardly, but stately and convenient within, 

* intimate what was in his thoughts. The statutes, 
' which are minute and elaborate to an extent before 
' that time unprecedented, impressed a monastic cha- 
^ racter on the whole institution.' This evidence is 
very strong. William of Wykeham, as he proved 
both at Windsor and Winchester, was a consummate 
architect; his buildings might seem to be tlie most 
faithful expressions of his inward feeling. He wrote 
his statutes three times : in them he embodied his ma- 
turest thoughts. If they suggest the same conclusion 
as the exterior of his College, it would seem to be irre- 
sistible. And yet if we turn to the life of him by 
Bishop Lowth, the most accomplished Wykehamist of 
the last century, who has given the most patient and 
conscientious attention to all the original documents 
respecting him, and has put them together in a skilful 
and scholar-like manner, we should conclude that the 
subject of his biography, instead of having the least of a 
monastical tendency, was the best man of business of his 
time, the most thoroughly conversant with all civil affairs. 
Lowth quotes from a warden of New College, who lived 
fifty years after the death of Wykeham, the opinion 
that he knew very little of speculative wisdom, that he 
was too poor to have attained any scholastical know- 
ledge in his youth, but that in practical wisdom he was 



28 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEAENING. [lECT. 

unrivalled. Edward III. liad clearly that opinion of 
him : he was his chancellor in the most difficult times; 
no public or private business seems to have come amiss 
to him. 

I make these remarks — not only because it is always 
well to look at a remarkable man from two points of 
view, and to see how opposite notions respecting him 
may arise ; but because it is on the reconciliation of these 
two characters that his place in a history of education 
depends. The impulse which proceeded from him 
caused the foundation of All Souls and Magdalen, as 
well as his own College; but this was the least part 
of his work. It is the union of Winchester College 
with New College, of the school for boys with the 
school for men, which is the great fact of his life. He 
evidently felt that the time was past when any good 
could come from the foundation of monasteries or abbeys ; 
but that the principle which had been latent in them, 
and which was only producing idlers, might be turned 
to profit, provided the school and life could be con- 
nected, provided the stiff scholarship which belonged 
to the man could be bound up with the growth and 
expansion of the boy, through healthful exercises of the 
body as well as mind. If they could hold their due 
relation and proportion to each other — if one could be 
a nursery to the other— if the higher education could 
determine the character of the lower, and the lower send 
back energy and vitality to the higher — the University 
and the Grammar-school might furnish good and brave 
citizens to the commonwealth. 

I shall not apologise for saying so much of William 



I.] JUVE^^1LE AND ADULT LEAENING. 29 

of Wykeliam, seeing that the principle which %Yas 
expressed in his statutes was adopted by Henry VL 
in the foundation of King's College and Eton, and that 
therefore it is a key to all the educational movements of 
the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries in England. Those 
are the centuries in which the great movement which we 
usually describe as the revival of letters was going on 
upon the Continent. The civil wars hindered us from 
partaking in it as much as we otherwise might ; but 
these are the witnesses of the effect which it was to 
produce upon us, — a practical and national effect, for the 
sake of which one can spare some of the more showy 
effects which it produced in other lands. 

I will notice only one more indication of that period : 
it is one of the ironies of history, which I have no doubt 
has often been alluded to. Lincoln College was founded 
in 1427, for the purpose of training theologians to exter- 
minate the principles of Wycliffe. Its founder was 
Eichard Fleming, who had been a Wycliffite himself. 
Among the theologians whom his bounty raised up, to 
exterminate the notion that Christianity might be taken 
out of its scholastical forms aM presented directly to 
the body of the people, was John Wesley. The wills 
of founders, it w^ould appear, may sometimes be de- 
feated without the interference of Commissioners and 
Cabinet Ministers. 

Nor was that notion exterminated in the century 
which followed the death of Fleming, though in the 
beginning of the reign of Henry VIII. it seemed 
likely enough to suffer that fate. Henry himself was an 
enemy of it, in his double character of king and school- 



30 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. [LECT. 

man. Wolsey was the enemy of it, as the most magni- 
ficent of chnrchmen and statesmen, and as the patron oi 
Universitj learning. Sir Thomas More was the enemy 
of it, as lawyer, scholar, and divine. But the learning 
and piety of the friend of Erasmus were as little able to 
withstand the mighty and divine impulse of that time, as 
the splendour of the Cardinal and the will of the Tudor. 
The claim that each man should be recognised as a living- 
personal being, was too strong for any school wisdom 
to struggle with. That wisdom must adjust itself, as it 
could, to the conviction which the hearts of numbers had 
received as a direct message from heaven. And it did 
strive, sometimes awkwardly, sometimes skilfully, to 
make the adjustment. In the sixteenth century, more 
than in the fourteenth, the leaders of the Eeformation 
were to be found in the Universities, though there also 
were its greatest antagonists. The new learning was 
the instrument of the new faith. Language was the 
study to which those who Vv^ould fight the schoolmen, 
and bring forth the Bible, must devote themselves. 
Philology became to the men of this time v/hat Logic 
had been to their fathers. And philology could not be 
treated as logic had been, as a subject for University 
disputations. The grammar must actually be learnt ; 
the sooner the learning could begin, the better. The 
boys' school had now an importance which it had not 
before; it was especially the place for learning the gram- 
mar; it was, therefore, the place for arming the Protestant 
warrior. That this feeling was strong in the reign of 
Edward YI., any one who looks into the statutes 
of the schools which were founded then under royal and 



I.] JUVENILE AND ADULT LEAENING. 31 

reforming patronage will perceive. And lience there 
was a kind of cliasm between the studies of the school 
and those of the University which had not existed 
before. The prelections and disputations there seemed 
as if they had no bearing upon that which the boy was 
reading or committing to memory. Very soon the 
Jesuit reaction against the Reformation began. Among 
the three weapons in the armoury of this order, the 
school was more trusted and more successful than even 
the pulpit and the confessional. But the school meant 
among them what it was beginning to mean among 
their opponents, the place for training boys and girls, 
for bringing them up in the opinions which they were 
to hold in mature life. The business was to furnish 
manuals on all possible subjects. Education was be- 
coming an art, which had its own doctors and professors. 
Our worthy Eoger Ascham embodied his notion of the 
art in his ' Schoolmaster ; ' the rules of the Jesuits on 
the subject were, I doubt not, contained in much more 
elaborate and skilful treatises. Fortunately there was 
at our grammar-schools something better fhan any dog- 
mas about the art of training ; there was a free hearty 
life, games in which the limbs were expanded, a disci- 
pline which, with all its sternness, yet assumed boys to 
be human creatures, not machines. There was this 
good, which we must always thankfully acknowledge ; 
there were defects and evils, of which England had to 
endure the penalty, and which drew forth the com- 
plaints and protests of some of the best and noblest of 
her sons. 

It is startling to hear such words as these from Lord 



32 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNINQ. [lECT. 

Bacon. He is advising King James toucliing Mr. 
Sutton's estate, that is to say, touching the project of 
Christopher Sutton to found the Charter House School. 
He says, — ' Concerning the advancement of learning, I 
' do subscribe to the opinion of one of the wisest and 

* greatest men in your kingdom, that for grammar- 

* schools there are already too many, and therefore no 
' providence to add where there is excess : for the great 
' number of schools which are in your highness's realm 
' doth cause a want, and doth cause likewise an over- 
' flow ; both of them inconvenient, and one of them 

* dangerous. For by means thereof they find want, in 
' the country towns, both of servants for husbandry and 
' apprentices for trade ; and on the other side, being 

* more scholars bred than the state can prefer or em- 
' ploy, and the active part of that life not being in 

* proportion to the preparative, it must needs fall out 
'■ that many will be bred unfit for other vocations, and 

* unprofitable for that in which they are brought up ; 

* which fills the realm full of indigent, idle, wanton 

* people.' 

But he says in the next paragraph, ' Therefore in 

* this point I wish Mr. Sutton's intentions were exalted 

* a degree ; that that which he meant for teachers of 
' children, your majesty should make for teachers of 

* men ; wherein it hath been my ancient opinion and 
' observation, that in the Universities of this realm, 
' which I take to be of the best endowed Universities of 
' Europe, there is nothing more wanting towards the 
^ flourishing state of learning, than the honourable and 
'plentiful salaries of readers in arts and professions. 



I.] JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. "33 

* Surely readers in the cliair are as parents in sciences, 
'■ and deserve to enjoy a condition not inferior to the 
'■ children who embrace the practical part ; else no man 

* will sit longer in the chair than till he can walk to a 
' better preferment For if the principal readers, 

* through the meanness of their entertainment, be but 

* men of superficial learning, and that they shall take 
' their place but in passage, it will make the mass of 
' sciences want the chief and solid dimension, which 
^ is depth, and to become but pretty and compendious 
' habits of practice.' 

These weighty sentences are the weightier because 
Bacon was the great protestant against the method of 
study which he had found established in the Universi- 
ties : a great part of their dialectical system seeming to 
him a grievous and fatal check on the free investigation 
of nature. And I would remind you that his fear that 
the sciences should become merely ' pretty and compen- 
' dious habits of practice,' did not arise from any want of 
the practical element in himself. It was predominant in 
him ; in it lay his strength and his danger. But he felt 
that there would be an end of all true and manly 
practice, if it were not continually fed from springs that 
are not in itself. He knew that it would become formal, 
traditional, improgressive, if it were not associated with 
fixed and eternal principles. 

If I had time, I should endeavour to show you Avhat 
illustration this remark receives from the treatise of 
Milton on Education, in his letter to Mr. Hartlib, which, 
whatever may be the merits or mistakes of the plan 
of study which it recommends, is one of the most sug- 

D 



34 JUVENILE AXD ADULT LEAENING. [LECT^ 

gestive books ever written, as it is one of the bravest 
and noblest ; a witness, as all his other books are, that 
no man had drunk more deeply into the spirit of onr 
English institutions, if he was over impatient of the 
forms, when the spirit, as he thought, had departed from 
them. I should refer also to the treatise of Locke on 
Education, which I should like a foreigner to read 
immediately after he had read Milton's letter on the 
same subject, that he might understand what different 
aspects our literature presents. He will find two men 
writing at an interval of a few years, brought up, one 
may say, in the same dogmatical school, treating on the 
same topics, disliked by the same people, one of whom 
cannot prevent his thoughts and his words from rising 
into poetry if he is treating of the vulgarest topics, the 
other of whom must speak the plainest prose if he is 
occupied with the most sublime. Nevertheless, the 
foreigner will, I think, discover in both that honest 
benevolence which never scorns anything as beneath 
them in which human beings are interested. He who 
was busy with all the highest questions of faith and 
government, who was fresh from the air and associations 
of Italy, who was meditating the divinest poem, was at 
the same time the hard-working schoolmaster in Alders- 
gate Street ; he who aspired to lay down the laws of the 
Understanding did not forget that he was bred a phy- 
sician, and could define accurately the proper thickness 
of children's shoes. 

But this practical English wisdom was beginning in 
the seventeenth century, more and more to stand aloof 
from that wliich was embodied in the Colleges and 



I.] JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. 35 

Universities. The scliools and the world were not, as 
they had once been, different spheres ; they became 
competitive and hostile, each striving to do the work 
of the other. The schools seized the principles which 
the previous century had vindicated, and reduced them 
into hard systems, robbing them of their life ; the world 
tried to fashion an education for itself, which should 
meet its emergencies, and create for it hands, not men. 
While this war was going on, while it was at its height, 
good rafen of the upper and middle classes became sud- 
denly aware that a population was growing up around 
them, which was without knowledge, without the 
means of acquiring knowledge. We can never be 
thankful enough for the discovery, and for the earnest 
efforts which it awakened. To these probably we owe 
it, that Great Britain was able to preserve, and somewhat 
to improve, the education of her gentlemen ; if they had 
not betliought them in time of rescuing the children of 
their labourers from barbarism, their own might have 
become barbarous. I am convinced that the experiments 
which have been made in the education of the boys and 
girls and infants of the lower classes have done us all more 
good than we can measure. Nevertheless it was inevit- 
able that these experiments, undertaken at a time when 
there was much disorder and perplexity in the thoughts 
of our countrymen about the teaching which they had 
possessed for centuries, when there was so great a discord 
between thought and action, should have been hastily 
conceived and not very consistently worked out. ' Boys 

* and girls must be taught, at all events, to read and 

* write and cipher ; what else they should be taught w« 

d2 



36 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. [LECT. 

' may consider afterwards ;' this was the first and very- 
natural thought of people living in an age of printed 
books, and wont to regard money transactions as the 
most important of all. But instructions starting from 
this ground, however reasonable a one it may seem, 
have not been found to accomplish the purpose at which 
they aimed, to say nothing of any higher purpose. It 
does not signify how many studies, sacred or secular, 
you append to these first and elementary studies ; it does 
not signify on what plea you append them ; education 
can never be felt to be the rightful portion and inherit- 
ance of Britons, its own meaning and dignity must be 
altogether forgotten, when you determine its purpose by 
that which is at best only its starting point. Learning 
cannot look Work in the face ; it must quail at the sight 
of its steady progress, its mighty achievements. Your 
boys and girls must scorn their primers when they see 
what can be done, what they themselves can do, with 
the help of the steam engine. Unless you can find 
some way of showing them that Learning and Working 
presume each other are necessary to each other, you 
are but spinning a web to-day which to-morrow will 
unravel. 

Now it has seemed to me that the circumstances of 
this time especially invite us and oblige us all, to con- 
sider how this reconciliation may be brought about. I 
do not mean merely the circumstances which discourage 
us respecting the issue of our past efforts for the poor ; 
I mean those which begin to give us some hope of a 
reform in the institutions which accident, not their 
original intention, has nearly confined to the rich. The 



I.] JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. 37 

discussions respecting the Universities show us how our 
education has taken its rise, what have been the great 
helps, what have "been the most serious hindrances, to its 
advancement and its diffusion. If you seriously medi- 
tate on the facts which these discussions have brought 
to light, they may lead you to conclusions very different 
from those to which they lead me; but they will at 
least force you to admit that those who would try to 
encounter the great question, how grown men may 
be trained to think as well as to act, are not run ning 
counter to the wisdom of other ages, are not despising 
the lessons which the noble men who flourished in 
them, by their words and their deeds, have bequeathed 

to U.S. 

I have been far too long, but I cannot conclude 
without one observation more. It was felt to be a verp 
gi*eat step in Education, when the infants' school waa- 
added to the schools for boys and girls. There were- 
some who hoped everything from that addition. ' When 

* we have reached the cradle,' they said, ' we have found 

* the standing point from Avhich we can move the world.' 
You may fancy, perhaps, that I am entirely at issue with 
these sanguine dreamers ; seeing that I have taken the- 
ascending instead of the descending line ; that I have- 
attributed our failures not to our neglect of those who 
have not reached the age of boyhood, but of those who" 
have passed it. But I can clear myself of this charge. 
Whatever the infant school may have done or may not 
have done, I believe that the zeal which has been 
awakened respecting infant education has been of un- 
speakable worth. I believe it for two reasons. First 



38 JUVENILE AND ADULT LEARNING. [LECT. 

because it has been impossible in educating little chil- 
dren to think chiefly of reading and writing and cipher- 
ing. Y\G have been compelled to remember that we 
have living spirits to deal with, which must by most 
wonderful and mysterious processes, wherein we may be 
agents, wherein we cannot be principals, be brought to 
trust, to think, to hope, to know. My second reason is, 
that those who think most earnestly of infant education 
must think of adult education. However they may 
reverence the descending scale, they cannot expect to 
teach infants by infants. They must above all things 
desire that the mothers should have wise, loyal, English 
hearts. By all means let us labour for that end. If I 
did not believe that the education of working men 
would lead us by the most direct road to the education 
of working women, I should care much less for it. 
But I am sure that the earnest thoughtful man who is 
also a labourer with his hands, instead of grudging his 
wife the best culture she can obtain, will demand that 
she should have it. He will long to have a true house- 
hold, he will desire to bring up brave citizens. He will 
understand that his country looks to the wives and 
mothers, in every one of her classes, as the best security 
that the next generation of Englishmen shall not make 
her ashamed. 



II.] LEAKNING AND LEISURE. 39 



LECTURE 11. 



LEARNING AND LEISURE. 

The maxim, that all hope for the Improvement of 
our comitry lies in the education of her youth, was 
examined in my last Lecture. I pointed out some 
of the difficulties which those experience who try to 
■carry it into practice. The children of the poor, and of 
some who are not absolutely poor, are taken away for 
the business of the world, before they have acquired 
more than a smattering of knowledge from the school. 
That smattering of knowledge is not found to be of any 
great avail afterwards : the complaint has gone forth, 
that they have not cultivated the faculty or obtained 
the information which fit them to be serviceable citizens. 
Either they are awkward in the business to which they 
devote themselves, or in the pursuit of it they forget 
most of tlie little lore which they have brought with 
them. These statements may be much exaggerated ; 
if they are true, there must be innumerable exceptions. 
But the evidence for them is too strong not to shake 
terribly the expectations which we had most of us built 
on our schools for boys and girls. 



43 LEARNIXG AND LEISURE. [LECT* 

Is it possible, then, to found schools for men ? If 
we cannot keep the young from business, may we teach 
the full-grown who are already busy? May we en- 
deavour to give parents an interest in the education of 
their children by educating them? At first sight the 
difficulties in the way of such a project seem far gi-eater 
than those which we are encountering now — the mate- 
rials which we have to mould are so much harder and 
less pliable. But it is not always safe to act upon 
first impressions. What is the testimony of history 
on the subject? I endeavoured to trace the intel- 
lectual growth of Europe, but . especially of England, 
through a series of ages, dwelling not upon events that 
happened in a corner, or that looked important to an 
individual or a party, but on those which were admitted 
by all to be of deep and wide significance. The infer- 
ence appeared irresistible. Schools, according to the 
original force of the word, had not a direct application 
to children. They were places for preserving and ex- 
panding the studies which belong especially to men. 
They were intended to make men conscious that they 
had other organs besides the organs of sense, and that 
these had their proper objects and exercises. The result 
was the same, whether we looked at the schools which 
grew up in England after its conversion to Christianity, 
or to the lessons which Alcuin imparted to the Frankish 
monarch, or to the Saxon discipline of Alfred, or to the 
systematic Latin culture in the Norman monasteries, 
or to the Universities in the twelfth century, or to 
those Universities in the thirteenth century, when they 
had in a great measure submitted to the mendicant 



II.] LEARNING AND LEISURE. 41 

orders, or again in the fourteenth, when Colleges were 
growing up in them which were substitutes for the 
cloister life, and were directing it to another purpose. 
Adult education was always taking precedence of 
juvenile education, determining its objects and for the 
most part its form, exercising an influence over the 
whole of society which that could never have exercised. 
In due time we saw the Grammar-school arising ; but 
it arose in connexion with the College, the College 
itself being under the shadow of the University. 
Gradually these schools for boys obtained an inde- 
pendent importance ; tlieir connexion with the adult 
teaching was not as obvious as it had been. Then 
Bacon wished to check the growth of them, to direct 
the bounty of kings and subjects again into the channel 
of the Universities : then Milton complained that both 
had lost their manly character, and had ceased to serve 
the commonwealth. In modern times we found that 
the English University had gradually assumed the 
form of an advanced Grammar-school. Hence the 
complaints of its inefficiency ; hence the demand for 
reformation ; hence the readiness with which those who 
are least disposed that the Universities should take the 
shape which the public would give them, have con- 
sented that their restoration should be promoted by the 
legislature. 

A conclusion honestly deduced from facts so various 
and so inconsistent as these, has some right to be con- 
sidered of weight. Yet I can conceive that it may still 
appear to many quite incredible. It would appear so 
to me — scarcely any amount of historical evidence would 



42 LEARNING AND LEISITEE. [LECT. 

induce me to accept it — if I felt that it really contra- 
dicted the principle which the champions of early- 
education are asserting. They are certain that a full- 
grown man who has been without education all his life, 
must be in a more hopeless condition for receiving it 
than a child or a boy. There can, I conceive, be no 
doubt of that proposition. The question is, whether 
this is the condition in which our forefathers found 
those to whom they imparted their lessons ; whether 
this is the condition in which we shall find the working- 
men of our day. The people of Kent and Northumbria 
might perhaps have seen no Christian Missionaries till 
Augustine or Paulinus came among them. But surely 
it would be a prodigious mistake to say that they had 
had no teaching which prepared them for that of the 
Missionaries, none but what interfered with it. They 
had the sun and moon and stars over their heads; 
they had the earth which they were trying to cultivate; 
they had the ocean on which they were sailing. They had 
children, brothers, wives, husbands. They had affections 
and sorrows ; they had life and death. These were school- 
masters that had been at work upon them, and without 
whose aid Augustine and Paulinus, I apprehend, would 
not have done much. They might meet with some 
who had studied well, some who had studied ill, under 
these doctors ; some whose old traditions had over- 
shadowed or effaced their lessons ; some in whom those 
same traditions had awakened thoughts which they 
would not otherwise have had. They may have met 
with some comparatively at ease, some dissatisfied and 
restless ; but they will not have met with a single man 



II.] LEARNING AND LEISURE. 43 

who had not been nnder a training, a veiy wonderful 
training, carried on, as they held, if they had faith in 
their own proclamation, by an invisible Being of whom 
they could give clearer and more authentic tidings than 
the Saxons had yet received. 

In like manner, we are not exactly to conclude' that 
Charlemagne- had no preparation for that strange lore 
about contraries and opposites, which Alcuin brought to 
him. He might have been occupied chiefly in fighting 
and ruling ; but he could not cany on either of these 
operations without speaking. If he spoke, his words 
followed one another in some order ; his discourses 
obeyed some laws as well as his armies. Those laws 
were the laws of gTammar and of logic. He had been 
a grammarian and a logician all his life without knowing 
it. Alcuin only made him aware of the fact, which 
caused him, no doubt, a new and a very delightful 
surprise, and which he took in Avith ten times more 
intelligence and relish because he was in the habit of 
observing facts. 

The simple teaching of Alfred in geography and 
history was addressed to people living in an island, 
and often seeing ships which came to them from other 
countries with strange things and stranger men ; to 
people who had come to know that they were members 
of a nation, and therefore cared to know what the 
nation had been doing before they were born. If you 
wonder that in the centuries which followed, this kind 
of teaching seemed to be less prized than that which 
had no native associations, that which, as we are wont 
to say, consisted only in verbal subtleties, I must ask 



44 LEARNING AND LEISURE. [LECT, 

you again to remember that words have as much to do 
with human beings as swords and ingots have; that words 
were the special weapons of the scholar as distinguished 
from the warrior and the merchant, though all throe 
were obliged to use them ; that to enter into the force 
and conditions of these words and the relations in 
which they stood to things, did not look like trifling, 
but like a very solemn and serious occupation indeed. 
Those crowds who rushed to hear Abelard talk about 
universals and particulars, were thoroughly awake and 
in earnest. They supposed that he had something to 
tell them which concerned them as thinking beings; 
and what had to do with them in that character struck 
them as of not less importance than what had to do 
with them as eating and drinking beings. 

There was, then, a previous education and discipline 
which led men in these ages to seek for certain kinds 
of intellectual food. They received the food if it met 
the particular hunger which had been awakened in 
them ; if any other had been provided, it would have 
been rejected. Are we to suppose that it is altogether 
otherwise in our day ? Have our working people re- 
ceived no education for which they are not indebted to 
us ? They have, at all events, some of those books out 
of which their forefathers read. They see the sun and 
stars occasionally, even in London and Manchester ; 
often enough to remove any scepticism as to their con- 
tinued existence. They have brothers, wives, sons ; 
tliey have to fight with sorrows, inward and outward 
— with life and death. They converse with each other 
in words, as men did in other days, as men do still in 



II.] LEARNING AND LEISURE. 45 

otlier classes. Their words follow certain laws, under- 
stood or misunderstood. They belong to a nation richer 
"by a thousand years in history than it was when 
Alfred reigned. The government under which they 
live affects them for good or evil as his did the inha- 
bitants of Wessex and the more distant provinces out 
of which our England was only beginning to form itself. 
I speak of that which they have in common with those 
who discovered that the lore of the schools concerned 
them. We are wont to boast that our century has 
immeasurable advantages which theirs could not dream 
of. We talk of our cheap books, magazines, news- 
papers. We delight to remember that our people throw 
shuttles, work engines, transmit lightning messages. 
Can it be that they crave less for intellectual nourish- 
ment than those did upon whom we look almost with con- 
tempt, or that they have not the same organs for masti- 
cating and digesting it ? 

There is one answerc ommonly given to this ques- 
tion which sounds most plausible and decisive. ' The 

* circumstances of our working people,' it is said, 

* are altogether unlike the circumstances of those with 
' whom you compare them. The name we give them 

* points out what the difference is. The schools, you 
' admit, though they were open to the poor, were separate 
< from the ordinary interests and pursuits of men whether 
*" rich or poor. Our people are absorbed in these interests 

* and pursuits. The successful worker cannot be at the 

* same time the student. Scraps of loose miscellaneous 

* lore he may pick up from time to time. When his daily 
'■ tasks are over, he may be persuaded sometimes to 



46 LEARNING AND LEISURE. [lECT. 

sleep on tlie bencli of a lecture-room rather than on 
the bench of a beer-house. There will, of course, be 
exceptions, but, as a rule, leisure and learning have 
always gone and will always go together. Your busy 
man of the upper and middle class, even though his 
occupations may be scientific or literary, or benevolent 
or religious — even though he can intermit them when 
he likes — is not a thinker. He knows about a num- 
ber of topics, but he does not deepen or improve our 
wisdom or his own. Can you expect a better result 
from men whose toils are not voluntary, but com- 
pulsory, and, to a great extent, of a dull mechanical 
kind? Industry is good, science and literature are 
good ; but they have always kept at a respectful dis- 
tance from each other ; nor is that distance likely to 
be diminished as the demands for the fruits of industry^ 
and therefore upon the time of those who produce 
them, become more imperative.' 
Upon this showing, the chief warrant for our pride 
and self-congratulation is the reason why we must 
always despair. Because our works are so much greater 
than those of our forefathers, we must be content that 
our men should be less intelligent, less Imman, than they 
were ; we must expect that the more they achieve, the 
more ignorant they shall become, the more every higher 
faculty in them shall be dwarfed. This decree, if it 
is announced with ever so much confidence, if it looks 
ever so indisputable, is somewhat too mournful to be 
immediately acquiesced in. We must at least consider 
whether the statements on which it rests are quite 
invulnerable. 



11.] LEAENINa AND LEISURE 47 

One peculiarity in the history of our time is curious, 
and deserves a little to be reflected on. The most intel- 
ligent patrons of juvenile education, — those who have 
had most opportunity of seeing how it works, and what 
are its defects, — are very generally convinced that all 
our schools ought to be industrial schools. Great as 
are those diversities of opinion to which I alluded in 
my last Lecture, there is a startling agreement on this 
point among those whose judgment is entitled to any 
respect; I have heard that some who have spent their 
lives in promoting the instruction of the poor, and whose 
purses are as open as ever they were, have declared that 
they will not give a sliilling to any school in whicli work 
and teaching are not combined. Now, though I am sure 
that one of their objects is to prepare the children for 
being tailors or shoemakers or cooks or housemaids 
hereafter, I cannot believe that this is their chief object. 
Sullen masters and mistresses may say that they do not 
care for the school apprenticeship, that they could teach 
their servants better themselves. But the advantages of 
this discipline are found to be immediate, not prospective. 
The children may not at once earn better wages in con- 
sequence of the facility they have acquired, but they do 
their school tasks infinitely better. Not only are their 
bodily powers cultivated, but the words which they 
read acquire a life and reality which they scarcely ever 
have when the book stands by itself, when the only 
business is to spell it out. On the other hand, the 
work, even if it is imperfectly executed, is understood 
to be a part of the day's duties ; its character is raised ; 
and tlie child does not look forward to the workshop as 



48 LEAENINa AND LEISURE. [lECT. 

sometliing whicli is to separate Mm from all that lie is 
doing l)efore lie goes to it. 

These are very substantial arguments on behalf of a 
course which is adopted by persons, to whose authority 
and experience we might bow if they had no arguments 
to bring forward at all. They may go very little way 
towards shaking the doctrine about the connexion of 
Learning and Leisure, in any mind in which it has taken 
root ; but those who believe that the child is the father 
of the man, and who cannot perceive that the school 
industry can be different in kind from the industry of 
the world, or that the last must not serve the same end 
as the first in a higher degree, because it is more real, 
may at least be ready to wait for further evidence be- 
fore they pronounce that work when it is most effective, 
most productive, must of necessity be incompatible with 
regular and manly study. 

Some further evidence on this point, I believe, we 
derive from the experience of other classes. The old 
adage about the dulness which comes to the schoolboy 
when he has all work and no play, might be considerably 
changed without losing its force. Cricket and rowing, 
when they are pursued earnestly, — and every true .boy 
must be earnest in all he does, — become very hard 
work indeed. They are wanted as work, and as work 
they make the proper school tasks immeasurably more 
profitable than they would otherwise be. The grammar- 
school becomes in that sense an industrial school. The 
games are happily voluntary, not formal and prescribed. 
But there is an order and discipline in them, as in those 
pursuits of which the master takes cognisance ; if they 



II.] LEAENIXa AND LEISURE. 49 

were to cease, he would feel the difference as much as 
his pupils. 

At the University the case is still stronger. There 
the craving for action becomes exceedingly vehement. 
In some it is satisfied by bodily exercises ; those of the 
grammar-school giving place to others belonging to a 
more advanced age, the cricket-bat being deserted for 
the scarlet coat. But those who never have these im- 
pulses, or cannot gratify them if they have, exhibit the 
same eagerness to be about the tasks of the world, — to 
be doing, and not merely reading. I suppose most per- 
sons, in looking back to the time they passed at College, 
know what this feeling is, and to what morbidness and 
restlessness it gave rise. Though they might not 
expect to draw any considerable prizes in the lottery 
of the world, they still wished to be in the midst 
of it, and, if that was not possible, to obtain what sem- 
blance of it they could get in rooms and walks which 
seem to derive their beauty from the exclusion of it. 
Of course, it is easy to account for all such tempers of 
mind by repeating commonplaces about the discontent 
of every one with his own lot, about the longing of the 
landsman for the sea and the sailor for land, and so 
forth. If you delight in retailing such wise saws, which 
have done duty in boys' themes for about two thousand 
years, you can find an additional instance to support 
them in your own later experiences, — in the pleasure 
with which, being amidst the smoke and noise of cities, 
you reflect upon the quiet of the cloistei, and desire a 
home in it. Each fact is well worthy of being noted 
and reflected on ; each confirms and explains the other. 

E 



50 LEAENINO AND LEISURE. [LECT. 

But they ought not to suggest so barren a moral, as that 
no one can be happy where he is ; they should lead us 
to ask ourselves very seriously, whether the life of 
thought and the life of action have not a necessary 
relation to each other, according to the laws of God's 
providence, according to the constitution of man; and 
whether there can be contentment — whether there ought 
to be — when they are divorced from each other. 

I have spoken first, as I did in the former Lecture, 
of our present experience, because I have no notion 
that any one will attend to the lessons of the past 
unless he can connect them with that and use them for 
the illustration of it. But let us next consider, what 
the moral and intellectual history of nations and indi- 
viduals says in favour of that pretty alliteration of 
Learning and Leisure ; whether they have really any 
thing more to do with one another than Macedon and 
Monmouth ; whether, on the other hand, Learning and 
Working have not been shown in all ages, even when 
they have been most unnaturally severed, to be bone of 
each other's bone, flesh of each other's flesh. 

No one has ever doubted that the monastic life and 
discipline are closely connected with European civiliza- 
tion. If any Protestant is afraid to confess this fact, 
he must be an exceedingly bad Protestant"; one who 
acts upon the maxim which in words he repudiates, that 
truth may be concealed, and that we may lie for God ;; 
one who is ignorant to what men we owe the first 
impulses towards reformation. It is, in fact, the denial 
of the worth of the monastic life which has led to a 
monstrous exaggeration of its worth, to the fancy 



II.] LEARNING AND LEISURE. 51 

which many in our day are cherishing, that it has a 
merit in itself, that it is less liable to abuse than 
other kinds of life, that it is desirable for all countries 
and all times ; notions which the testimonies of monks 
and the histories of orders would much more com- 
pletely refute than any criticisms or commentaries of 
ours upon them. The history of this life in the west, — 
for the monastic life of the east has quite a different 
meaning and character, — begins with the foundation of 
the monastery near Monte Casino in the middle of the 
sixth century. Thither came young Benedict in the 
year 528. There he established his order, there he 
proclaimed the rule which became the model for all 
subsequent rules, the standard which the restorers of 
discipline, after it had decayed, were always seeking to 
brink back. The Benedictines of the congregation of 
St. Maur, who hi the seventeenth century were the 
most learned men in Europe, always maintained, that 
in devoting themselves to study they were following 
out the intentions of their founder. Benedict, by the 
acknowledgment of Gregory the Great, his biographer, 
was devoted to letters before he left Borne, and he 
certainly did immeasurably more to promote letters by 
going to Monte Casino, than he could have done if he 
had acquired and circulated all the knowledge which 
was then to be found in the capital. What he did was 
to lead men away from their farms and their merchan- 
dise, that they might become the teachers of the nations, 
the asserters of a spiritual and divine foundation for the 
culture of western Europe. Now the following passage 
is taken from the Benedictine rule ; it embodies a maxim, 

e2 



52 LEARNING AND LEISURE. [LECT. 

which you will perceive could not be merely a maxim, 
but was worked into the system. ' Idleness is the 
enemy of the soul. Therefore, at certain times the 
brethren must be occupied in the labour of the hands, 
and again at certain hours in divine study. We 
think that both ends may be accomplished by this 
arrangement. From Easter till the Calends of October, 
let them go out in the morning, and from the first hour 
till nearly the fourth let them labour for the procuring 
of that which is necessary. Again, from the fourth 
hour to about the sixth let them be at leisure for 
reading. Rising from the table after the sixth hour, 
let them have an interval of rest upon their beds, or if 
any one should wish to read, let him so read that he 
may not disturb his neighbour. At the ninth hour let 
them again work till the evening if the necessity of 
the place or their poverty require it, and let them 
gather the fruits of the earth, seeing that those are 
true monks who live by the labour of their hands, as 
our fathers and the Apostles did. But let all things 
be done moderately and in measure on account of those 
that are feeble. From the Calends of October till the 
beginning of Lent, let them be at leisure for reading 
till the second hour, then from the third to the ninth 
hour let all labour at the work which is enjoined 
them. In the days of Lent, let them be at leisure for 
their readings from the early morning to the third 
hour, from thence to the eleventh let them do the work 
which is enjoined them.' 
I quote this passage that you may see what principles 
were recognised as fundamental in this discipline. 



II.] LEARNING AND LEISURE. 53 

Working and learning so far, not learning and leisure, 
went hand in hand. Or rather, for this is the phrase 
which the Benedictine rule adopts, the reading was the 
leisure. The work of the hands demanded this to 
quicken and sustain it. The reading demanded equally 
the work of the hands as the condition of its being 
healthy and nutritive to the mind. Here in England, 
the Benedictine rule must have established itself very 
early ; some modification of it existed probably from 
the time of Augustine. Whenever the monasteries 
sought to renovate themselves, or to recover their in- 
fluence, they had recourse to it ; it became strong under 
Dunstan, universal under the Normans. But there 
was, as I observed in my last Lecture, a conflict of the 
popular spirit with the monastical ; they had alternate 
triumphs and defeats. Either I think would have 
destroyed the nation without the other; together they 
upheld it. The monastery became strong through the 
union of labour and study ; then it waxed tyrannical and 
dangerous ; soon it sunk into sloth and contempt. The 
kings and people became strong through the union of 
book wisdom with the common homely wisdom ; then 
the mere traffic or amusement of the Avorld was exalted 
above everything high and mysterious ; feebleness and 
sensuality succeeded. Neither power was sufiered to 
become utterly dead ; the other rose up to struggle 
with it and to awaken its energies. The witness of 
each in itself and of both together is the same. ■ Letj 
learning try to exist by itself and it dies; let common] 
industry try to exist by itself and it dies. The ease^ 
to which each gives birth murders its parent. \ 



54 LEARNING AND LEISUKE. [LECT. 

You licar mucli of tlic quibbles of tlic schools in the 
middle ages. I have ventured to question the justice 
of the word when it is used generally to describe the 
learning of those ages. The questions which turn upon 
the meaning of words are not quibbles ; they may lead 
us into the deepest knowledge of ourselves ; they may 
clear our minds of the quibbles and contradictions into 
which they fall through ignorance. J^ut I do not in 
the least deny that tlic most miserable quibbles grew 
out of the logical controversies of that period. The 
eminent men of the day were almost as much aware of 
it as we can be. John of Salisbury in the reign of 
Henry II. formally denounced and exposed the trifles 
and triflcrs that encountered him in the schools as well 
as in the court. Whence came the trifling of the 
schools ? The answer has been given again and again 
by those who have understood the subject best. They 
have said, ' The schoolmen had too much leisure. They 

* had time to spin endless cobwebs. They were not in 

* commerce witli the business of the world. They 

* could not test by it the worth of the thoughts with 
*■ whicli their brains were teeming. They could not turn 

* their thoughts into acts, and contemplate them apart 

* from themselves. They were always working in sub- 

* tcrranean chambers, Avhere they forged armour not for 
' heroes to wear in their battles on earth, but to play 

* with and fight with by the light of their own fires.' 

I said that John of Salisbury alluded to the court- 
triflers as well as to the school-triflers of his day. Tliey 
were men of the most opposite disposition, with an 
unbounded contempt for each other. Our Plantagenet 



II.] LEARNING AND LEISURE. 55 

pnnccs introduced into England the liglit literature of 
the south of France — the songs of the Troubadour 
minstrels. Jests and buffooneries came in with ditties 
and love-plaints, The monarch who received Ireland 
from Adrian IV., the monarch who led the armies of 
the Crusaders, delighted to hear the priests, and their 
faith, and their morals, turned into ridicule by these 
professors of another kind of lore. I am far from 
denying that they may have helped to rebuke hypocrisy, 
to check the predominance of the Latin schools, to 
show that there were aspects of life of which the 
ecclesiastics were not taking account, l^ut it must also 
be understood that they scorned the people at least as 
much as the priests, that in our country their minstrelsy 
would have crushed the English tongue as much as the 
Latin. It should also be remembered, that everything 
which their enemies said of the grossness and depravity 
of their lives, and of the effect of their literature upon 
the South of France, is confirmed by the latest and the 
most impartial historical inquiries. There are no 
words strong enough to denounce the wickedness of 
those who sent a Crusade against that region, or to 
describe the demoniacal acts by which the soldiers of 
De Montfort sought to buy for themselves a place in 
heaven. Nevertheless, intelligent Protestants have 
maintained that the utter demoralisation which the Pro- 
vencal literature expressed and promoted, made even 
that horrible visitation inevitable. The leisure and 
refinement of these doctors, their scorn of worlc, did 
not help much in the cultivation of Europe. 

Thank God, its poetry and its art had a different 



OQ LEARNING AND LEISUEE. [lECT. 

origin from this. It was not in the Court of Love that 
Dante found the person who purified and exalted his 
whole life ; nor was his life the life of leisure which the 
worshippers in that court coveted and claimed for the 
minstrel. Trained to the hard work of the camp, bred 
in the severest discipline of the schools, immersed in 
the factions of Florence, occupied with the politics of 
Europe, compelled often to change his friends and to 
find that those from whom he had hoj)ed most for his 
countrj were its deceivers and betrayers, he of all men 
could declare that he was not rocked and dandled into 
a patriot, a theologian, or a poet. And I apprehend we 
owe all the benefits which he has conferred on the world 
to this fact. He was not busy with abstractions, but 
realities. Eternal principles revealed themselves through 
events in which he suffered; through men whom he 
abhorred or loved. He discovered hoAV much grandeur 
and permanence there is in that which outwardly is 
paltry and transitory. So the fierceness of party and of 
his own spirit drove him to seek for an order which 
will maintain itself in defiance of all factions and 
emperors and popes ; which will avenge itself upon all. 
So the formulas of the schools became witnesses to him 
of that which is and which abides ; so the bright vision 
which had cheered and sustained him in the sorrows of 
earth, brightened more and more into the serene and 
perfect day. 

Possibly it will be admitted that the Poetry of 
Europe could not have grown up without this union 
of action and suffering with thought and study. But 
Painting, it will be said, is born and cradled amidst 



II.] LEARNING AND LEISURE. 57 

softer airs and more genial influences ; that at least 
requires patronage and leisure to foster it. Let us 
liear what testimony there is on this subject. I need 
not refer to any other authority, since I cannot refer to 
a higher, than Mrs. Jameson's ' Memoirs of the Early 
Italian Painters.' After pointing out the mistake into 
which many historians have fallen in placing Cimabue 
at the head of the great revolution in art in the thir- 
teenth and fourteenth centuries, Mrs. Jameson says 
that the great merit of that artist was in perceiving and 
protecting the talent of Giotto, ' than whom no single 

* human being of whom we read has exercised in any 

* particular department of science or art a more imme- 
' diate, wide, and lasting influence.' And then she 
tells a story which has often been told before, but 
never in clearer or more agreeable language than this : 
— ' About the year 1289, when Cimabue was already 

* old and at the height of his fame, as he was riding in 
' the valley of Perpignano, about fourteen miles from 
^ Florence, his attention was attracted by a boy who 
' was herding sheep, and who, while his flocks were 

* feeding around, seemed intently drawing on a smooth 

* fragment of slate, with a bit of pointed stone, the 
^ figure of one of his sheep, as it was quietly grazing 
' before him. Cimabue rode up to him, and looking 
' with astonishment at the performance of the untutored 
' boy, asked him if he would go with him and learn. 

* To which the boy replied that he was right willing if 

* his father were content. The father, a herdsman of 

* the valley, by name Bondone, being consulted, gladly 
' consented to the wish of the noble stranger, and 



6S LEAENING AND LEISURE. [LECT. 

* Giotto liencefortli "became tlie inmate and pupil of 
' Cimabue.' 

This story, resting on evidence wliich satisfies the 
accomplished narrator of it, goes much further, when it 
is connected with her remarks, than merely to prove, 
what no one perhaps would have doubted, that a 
shepherd boy may become a great artist. It shows 
that the refinement and cultivation of a man like 
Cimabue, sprung from the upper classes of society, 
commanding all the appliances for his art which were 
within any man's reach in his time, and possessing 
himself the divine gift which could turn them to ac- 
count, was not able to produce any deep and lasting 
impression upon the arts in Italy till he had evoked the 
genius of this herdsman's son. I do not wish to push 
the inference to any unfair length. I only desire that 
it should be noted as a fact that thus the great art- 
movement in Europe began. 

I have been the more anxious to speak of these 
Florentines, because it is to Florence that the supporters 
of the doctrine, that leisure is the necessary and natural 
support of learning, commonly turn with the greatest 
confidence and satisfaction. Passing lightly and not 
with much complacency over these rough and toilsome 
workers at the beginning of the fourteenth century — '■ 
dwelling respectfully but in rather vague language upon: 
the great inventions of the period which followed, 
talking magnificently of printing, but very little of the 
hard hands which wrought the first types, of the lonely 
and painful efforts of those who conceived and sought to 
realize the possibility of making them the expressions 



II.] LEARNING AND LEISURE. 59 

of thought — alluding with somewhat more distinctness 
to the merchants who brought the treasures of Greece 
into the West — thej transport us rapidlj to the gardens 
of Lorenzo the Magnificent ; they tell us to contemplate 
the scholars and sculptors and painters who are gathered 
there ; and they bid us reflect devoutly on the way in 
which wealth and luxury have been able to change the 
face of the world, and to substitute refinement for bar- 
barism. If these raptures were merely called forth by 
the spectacle of riches employed upon humanising 
instead of upon umvorthy objects, one would be un- 
willing that they should be suppressed. Nor do I 
acknowledge any sympathy with the reactionary school 
which denounces Pagan literature and Pagan art as 
cormpting and mischievous. That school, I think, 
shows great ingratitude to God for some of the blessings 
He has bestowed on the earliest and the latest ages ; 
benefits which may be instruments in delivering us 
from idolatry instead of leading us into it, as some of 
them did serve to break in pieces the idols which the 
middle ages had set up. But I must say, at the same 
time, that this school has found a great moral justi- 
fication in the tone which has been taken by those 
against whom it protests. The outrages of Lorenzo and 
of his family upon liberty, have been excused and 
tolerated in compliment to their liberality. The brave 
witness which the Dominican Savonarola bore, that the 
new art could not reform nations plunged and steeped 
in iniquity, and that the fosterers of that art in high 
places were themselves the guiltiest of all, has been 
denounced as fanatical. Leo X. has been glorified as 



60 LEARNING AND LEISURE. [LECT. 

the builder of St. Peter's and the patron of those who 
adorned it ; and the questions, how he built it and paid 
for it, and what he was, have been treated as interesting 
to theologians, but as of little significance for those who 
are studying the progress of civilization and refinement. 
Is it wonderful that men of earnest minds should have 
risen up in their wrath, and have sworn that with such 
maxims and such doctrines they would have nothing to 
do ; that they spring not from the reverence for art but 
from the reverence for wealth ; that they lead not to the 
refinement of nations in the north or in the south, but 
to the enfeebling of all their moral, and therefore of all 
their intellectual, energies? Are they to be greatly 
blamed if they say that, if they must choose, they would 
rather have fought by the side of Ziska and his Bohe- 
mian savages, though they would have crushed all 
learning, — because they were struggling for a principle, 
because they were maintaining a privilege for mankind, 
— than have stood by the side of Leo, or even by the 
side of Erasmus, in support of a scholarship which was 
to be upheld by corruption and insincerity ? 

What I am most anxious to assert is, that, by these 
means and under these protectors, neither learning nor 
faith could have been maintained, and that the great 
Reformation movement was as necessary to the one as 
to the other. It was necessary, because it connected 
both faith and learning with the ordinary work of man ; 
because it would not allow either to be shut up in 
monasteries or universities. Great as the crimes were 
which attended the destruction of the monasteries in 
our own land, bad as some of the consequences of that 



II.] LEARNING AND LEISURE. 61 

act have been, I am glad to liave the high authority of 
Mr. Hallam for thinking that its mischief to literature 
has been exceedingly overrated. The blessings which I 
spoke of as proceeding from the monasteries at their 
foundation, were precisely those wliicli they were not 
conferring, and which they could not confer in this 
stage of their growth, or rather of their decrepitude. 
The crimes of their inmates might be far less than they 
were represented to be, their revenues might fall into 
hands which had no right to them, and which applied 
them ill ; but the time, I conceive, was gone by, when 
they could meet the wants of the English character, and 
help to promote the intellectual and spiritual growth of 
its people. They could support beggars ; they could 
not tfeach men to work, or teach them when they were 
working. The tradesmen of the towns had grown up 
under a discipline different from theirs, had fallen under 
teachers who were generally in opposition to them. 
That great undefined body which we now call the 
working classes had not yet taken shape at all. What 
its demands would be, could not be foretold. It might 
be guessed that the universities and grammar-schools, 
as they existed, would not suffice for those who were 
tied to manual occupations. But the amazing develop- 
ments of our manufacturing and commercial industry 
lay hid in the unknown future. Our ancestors in the 
sixteenth century were removing various obstacles which 
checked them ; it was not to be expected that they should 
provide for what might come even of the discoveries and 
inventions with which they were already acquainted. 
But though the bodies which had promoted Learning 



62 LEARNING AND LEISURE. [lECT. 

in former days miglit fail to promote it in this day, it was 
still a question whether it might not grow up under in- 
dividual or state patronage ; whether the same influences 
which were said to have called forth genius in Italy, 
which in the judgment of some even created it, might 
not work with the like efiect in our colder climate. How 
far do the biographies of our most eminent men, illus- 
trated by the history of their times, fulfil this expec- 
tation ? 

The age of Elizabeth is the glorious age of our 
literature only because it is the great working age of 
the nation; one in which all thought was connected 
with actual business, and was used for the interpretation 
of it. In action our writers on Government and Polity 
were formed. You would expect to find Hooker, per- 
haps, cultivating his faculties and acquiring his calm 
wisdom in some monastical retreat. You find him 
rocking his child's cradle, shearing sheep, listening to 
the objurgations of a very troublesome helpmate. Our 
noble Spenser will at least dwell chiefly in a fantastic 
world. On the contrary, his fairy-land is his common 
native earth. He could not distinguish Elizabeth from 
Gloriana. His supposed allegory mixes with all daily 
common transactions. It was in that battle for life and 
death in which every one of us is engaged, that his Sir 
Guyons and Artegalls and Britomarts and Arthurs, 
proved their swords and won their laurels. 

A few years ago it might have been thought that 
Shakspeare ought to have no place in a Lecture on 
Learning. We should have been told that he was the 
great type instance of the force of original genius 



II.] LEARNING AND LEISUEE. 63 

without learning. I do not anticipate any such objec- 
tion now. I think all are agreed that historical learning, 
biographical learning, humane learning in the largest 
sense of the word, belonged to him, and that it did not 
drop npon him from the clouds ; that he acquired it ; 
that his genius enabled him to win it and to use it, but 
was not in the least a substitute for it. Most assuredly 
he did not obtain it in leisure, or in any school which 
exempted him from intercourse with the coarsest persons 
and occupations. If he had merely read the old chronicles 
of England he might have commented on them, much 
as others have commented on him. But he used them 
to interpret the actual world in which he lived, and 
so both pages became illuminated. There did not 
rise up in his study a frightful abstraction, called Man 
because it was unlike any individual creature that has 
ever borne the name. There did not arise from his 
empirical observations a set of walking figures labelled 
French, Italian, Dane, King, Poet, Doctor, noted by 
certain costumes and habits of speech, having nothing 
in common with each other. He found in the chronicles 
and tales which he read, men of all degrees, ages, and 
countries, who, because he took them to be essentially of 
the same flesh and blood and to have the same life with 
those whom he met in streets and taverns, presented 
themselves to him, and through him in a degree to us, 
with an awful distinctness ; so that w^e know they were, 
and cannot but feel also that they are. And so, with 
next to no antiquarian or geographical lore, he could yet 
make our own history intelligible, and make us feel the 
distinction of climates and races, as no one else has 



64 LEARNING AND LEISURE. [LECF. 

done. We ought not to admit for an instant that his 
circumstances were unfavourable to this cultivation ; 
that it was marvellous he could be what he was, belong- 
ing, as he did, to the people. His circumstances were 
assuredly the best possible for him, as those we are born 
to are the best for us. It is clear, from the example of 
liis contemporaries, who had some of the advantages 
which he had not, that if he had mixed in more artificial 
society he would have been less refined in his discourse, 
and, above all, less graceful and reverential in his ap- 
preciation of the female character, than he was. And, 
therefore, instead of setting him up as a mere marvellous 
phenomenon and an excuse for our self-worshij), it 
might surely be better to ask whether he does not give 
us the hint of a cultivation at once popular and pro- 
found, humane and national, which might be available 
for thousands, who are not separated from their fellows 
by any accidents of class or condition. 

No one, I think, quite likes to speak of Shakspeare 
as belonging to the reign of James I., though in that 
reign his greatest plays were produced, if not written. 
But there is another name which we feel belongs 
strictly to this time. Though the dedications which 
Lord Bacon has prefixed to his diflferent works are not 
exactly the documents by which one most wishes to 
remember him, they thrust themselves in our way, to 
tell us that his conception of a Solomon was somewhat 
different from ours. Here then we may expect to find 
the proof that patronage and leisure were the great 
supports of learning, physical as well as humane. But 
the evidence fails just when it promises to be most 



II.] LEAENIXa AND LEISUEE. 65 

decisive. Of all men who liave contributed to the 
advancement of knowledge, he was certainly the busiest. 
The pursuit of a scientific method never for a moment 
interrupted his occupations as a lawyer and as a states- 
man. Nor can it be said that science in his hands was 
at all indebted to patronage. He was ahvays consider- 
ing how it might be the better for that aid ; but his own 
position was that of a reformer, of one who was dissatisfied 
with the condition of studies as he found it, and with 
the means which were taken to foster them. His own 
honours and dignities, as they were his chief calamities, 
so they contributed nothing to the benefit of the studies 
in which he delighted, except as they connected him with 
common life, and thus led him to be an experimentalist 
instead of a theorist. 

I alluded in my last Lecture to the kind of leisure 
which Milton made for himself, after his return from 
Italy, when he became the teacher of boys in London. 
But there is an earlier stage in his life, between his 
leaving college and his going to Italy, when he may be 
thought to have cultivated leisure, the years during which 
he wrote Comus and Lycidas. I would advert for a 
moment to that time. No one can doubt that Charles I. 
afforded a much more graceful patronage to literature 
and to art than his father had done : not being himself 
the competitor of learned men, and caring more for the 
refined than for the scholastic parts of learning. The 
masques, which had been such fashionable entertain- 
ments in the former reign, probably acquired additional 
^grace and dignity from the encouragement of Henrietta. 
I allude to that particular branch of art and literature, 

P 



63 LEARNING AND LEISURE. [leCT. 

for both art and literature were combined in it, (Inigo 
Jones liad contributed his aid to it as well as Ben 
Jonson,) because it enables me to show you what Milton, 
the young Puritan, could effect in the very line that 
seemed especially appropriated to the court poets. They 
had gone on repeating, with more or less skill and 
talent; the same fantastical combinations of classical and 
fairy mythology, trusting really much more to the 
decorations, or to the ladies, who appeared as god- 
desses of the seas or the woods, than to the poetry which 
illustrated their looks. In his noble and gorgeous 
masque he discovers a purpose and order in that which 
had been merely grotesque. That which at best had 
merely reflected the tone of the court, liad been sensual 
or correct according to its tendencies, is at once trans- 
lated into a picture of the struggle of life, of the war 
which the spirit, seeking truth and purity, has to engage 
in with Comus and his midnight crew, of the divine 
powers which are at hand to break the spells of the 
enchanter, of the home which there is for those who 
seek it in the midst of the strife and after the victory. 
And all this is done, not by introducing dry moralities, 
not by breaking loose from the old forms, but by quick- 
ening them with another spirit, by substituting the 
human life for the court life. Trained in stern Hebrew 
wisdom, possessed with the divinity and the morality of 
the Hebrew books, he could impart to the classical and 
the romantic lore, in each of which he excelled all his 
contemporaries, a new meaning, and yet the very mean- 
ing which we feel must always have been latent in them.. 
But all would have been in vain if he had been merely 



II.] LEAENING AND LEISURE. 67 

a scholar, and liacl not felt tliat scliolarsliip is meant to 
penetrate and explain tlie work of the world. 

That the literature which was most popular after the 
Eestoration sought for leisure as its ally, I am not 
disposed to deny ; nor yet that the scholastic learning 
of that time often claimed the same companion, and 
shut itself out from the society of men. But the most 
learned men were, on the whole, the most practical. In 
the practical devotion of Jeremy Taylor, in the prac- 
tical sense of South, lies the strength of each. The 
great essayists of the reign of Queen Anne did not 
fancy that literature ought to be separated from business. 
Addison may not have been a good Secretary of State ;. 
but if he had thought that the business of a Secretary 
of State had nothing to do with the business of a Man 
of Letters, we certainly should not have had the ' Free- 
holder,' probably not the ' Spectator.' The charm of 
Addison, as it is of the writer who most resembles him 
in our day, lies in the union of the humane spirit of 
the man of letters with the wisdom which can only have 
been acquired by the man of business. We are taking 
counsel with one who knows the world better than we 
do, but who is also a friend able to help us in thinking- 
as well as in acting. 

There is, however, an amazing difference between 
those writings of the beginning of the last century and 
the delightful author to whom I have just alluded. 
You might read through the ' Spectator ' and the 
' Guardian ' without fancying that there were any 
people besides ladies and gentlemen and their servants 

r2 



63 LEARNING AND LEISURE. [LECT. 

ill God's universe. If the author of tlie ' Friends in 
Council' has discovered another set of inhabitants in 
our pL^net, and considers that it is a great part of his 
vocation and of ours to help them, no one would be 
more willing to allow, than he how much he is indebted 
for his better state of mind to events which have hap- 
pened and to persons who have lived between Addison's 
age and his. Every one now will recognise in the 
great Methodist movement of the last century a power 
which called an outlying world of animal existence 
into moral existence. Almost every one will see in 
one of the great enemies of that movement, Samuel 
Johnson, a sign that the refined age with which the 
century began was passing by degrees into a rough 
and working age, — that the scholar was not to hope 
much more from the patronage of kings and nobles. 
Of Johnson's life, in this point of view, I can have 
nothing to say which has not been anticipated by 
Mr. Carlyle ; and I should be afraid of showing, by 
some unfortunate phrase, that Johnson is less a hero 
with me than he is with him. As a proof that Learning 
and Work are more nearly associated in the lives of 
eminent men in later days, as in earlier ones, than 
Learning and Leisure, I may claim both the facts of 
Johnson's life and, what is of no less weight, the 
authority of his panegyrist. 

There is one more name to which I must allude, 
though I am again venturing on ground which Mr. 
Carlyle has travelled, and this time with the enthusiasm 
of a patriot as well as of a hero-worshipper. When 



II.J LEARNING AND LEISURE. 69 

I speak of Bobert Burns, it is not with the intention of 
descanting upon his powers, far less of demanding any 
new wonder for them. How good it would have been 
for him and for his contemporaries if they had won- 
dered less, if it had seemed to them nothing at all sur- 
prising that an Ayrshire peasant should think more 
freely and speak more nobly than those w4io had been 
trained amidst the forms of artificial life, who were in 
less close intercourse with that which is native and 
homely ! For then they would have sought less to 
remove him out of his sphere into theirs ; they would 
have wished more to profit by his strength, than that he 
should be a sharer in their weakness. I hope the ludi- 
crous stories of the behaviour of his patrons to him, 
the mournful stories of the effects of it upon his own 
mind, which are gathered together and so effectively 
brought home to us in Mr. Lockhart's biography, have 
not been lost upon this generation. I hope all are 
beginning to learn that the profession of Van Amburgh 
is by no means the most honourable or the most safe 
of professions. There are better things to be done than 
to exhibit lions, or feed them or tame them. If we can 
by any means assist in forming men, for which end 
we must teach them, and learn from them, not patronise 
them, that surely will be a better and more healthful 
work for our age and for the ages to come. 

All I have endeavoured to do in this Lecture is, to 
show you that the hindrances to this result do not arise 
from the fact that Work and Learning have a natural 
antipathy to each other. The practical difficulties in 



( 



70 LEAENING AND LEISURE. [LECT. 

t]i3 present condition of society wliicli liinder their 
union, which threaten to make tlie separation wider and 
more hopeless, I propose to consider hereafter. I shall 
conclude what I have been saying to-day, by alluding 
to the subject of which I was speaking at the end of 
the last Lecture. You may think that my remarks have 
had an almost exclusive reference to men, — that there 
was something ominous in my beginning from the 
monastery. On the contrary, I believe that the persons 
who have reconciled the schools with the world, the life 
of thought with the life of action, have been women, 
and, most of all, the women of England. An attempt 
was made to unite them in the monastery, but it failed, 
as every attempt must fail ultimately, to do that by 
our methods which God has done by his methods. 
Looking at the best female literature of our own and of 
former days, this, as it seems to me, has been its great 
function, to claim that all thought shall bear upon 
action and express itself in action, that it shall not 
dwell apart in a region of its own. I believe there is 
another task equally necessary, which it falls, perhaps, 
more within our province to perform, to show that tliere 
cannot be action without thought, that^^he power to 
rule the world without must come from the world 
witliin.J If each sex fulfils its own calling, there will 
be a blessing, of which others besides those whom we 
call the working-people will be the inheritors. If either 
fails, both will suffer, and suffer in a worse way than by 
the loss of any material advantages. The question has 
been greatly discussed in our day, what is the force of 



II.] LEARNING AND LEISURE. 71 

■the apostolical injunction, " If a man will not work, 
neither let him- eat," and under what limitations it is 
applicable to us. There is a more terrible sentence 
still, of which we should seek diligently to avert the 
execution upon ourselves and upon those who have all 
they need of outward consolations — " If a man will not 
work, neither let him think." 



72 leaeninCt and [lect. 



LECTURE in. 



LEARNING AND MONEY WORSHIP INCOMPATIBLE. 

In my last Lecture, I attempted to prove tliat Learning' 
and Work are not natural enemies, but natural allies. 
The word loorh I used in the largest sense. From the 
instance of Dante I argued that the most intense interest 
in practical politics — even in what we should call factious 
politics — did not prevent a man in the thirteenth centur j 
from being at once a profound schoolman and a divine 
poet. From tlie instance of Bacon I di'cw the inference 
that a laborious lawyer and statesman might be the re- 
former and methodiser of physical studies. Undoubtedly 
the occupations of the Florentine and of the Englishman 
were not manual ; they were working with their brains 
as priors and as chancellors, not less than when they 
were composing poems or treatises on the Advancement 
of Learning. But their occupations were of a kind which 
are ordinarily supposed to interfere with the pursuit of 
science and literature. Leisure from these toils has been 
esteemed even more necessary to secure calmness and 
extent of knowledge for the student, than freedom from 
manual exercises, which it is admitted may, under cer- 



III.] MONEY WORSHIP INCOMPATIBLE. 73 

tain limitations, be. a variety for liis mind, and be liealtli- 
ful to liis body. If, however, proofs were wanted that 
manual labour not taken up at hazard, or merely for 
change and recreation, but wrought into the tissue of 
the life, did not interfere with thought and with letters, 
there was the example of the Benedictine monks, with 
which I began, — there was the example of Robert Burns, 
with which I concluded. Labour was enjoined upon the 
one as the very condition of their social existence, as 
necessary to their devotion and their learning. The 
labour of the Scotch peasant was not only appointed for 
him from his birth; he owed to it his truest and highest 
inspirations. 

This evidence, if it is earnestly considered, will, I 
think, suggest the reply to an argument against the 
possibility of educating, in any regular manner, those 
who are always at work, which I hinted at in my last 
Lecture, but which I took no pains to confute. ' Even,' 
it has been said, ' the activity of those in the upper and 
^ middle classes of society who impose upon themselves 

* the duty of speaking and presiding at assemblies, bc- 

* nevolent, literary, and religious, evidently prevents 

* them from thinking steadily and continuously ; it 

* makes them quick and ready in retailing what has 
' been wrought out by others and sanctioned by the 

* voice of the circle in which they move, but incapable 

* of increasing our supplies of wisdom or of pointing us 

* to springs from which it may be renewed. How much 
^ more incredible,' the reasoner continues, ^ is it that 

* men who work every day, who work because they 

* must, who work at tasks in general mechanical and 



74 LEAHNIXa AND [lECT. 

* not intellectual, should ever do more than sip for a 

* chance moment at the streams or the puddles of know- 

* ledge, not having time to ascertain even whether they 
' are clear or muddy ! ' 

If it were true that the worker is only a hustler under 
compulsion, this conclusion would be irresistible. But 
the worker is emphatically not a bustler; he cannot be 
one. To fulfil his character, he must go on steadily 
from step to step ; there must be no hurry, and no inter- 
mission. And he is continually reminded how little he 
can do, how much is done for him. He can, according 
to Bacon's grand aphorism, but bring two things together, 
or separate them; the rest nature transacts in secret. The 
fever of the miscellaneous man, of the man who hopes to 
prevail by his multitude of words, is altogether foreign 
from him. Just so far as he is a producer, he is silent 
and calm. 

This assertion is equally true of the manufacturer as 
of the agricultural labourer. I do not undervalue the 
differences between them. I have already spoken of the 
life of Burns in the open air, following his plough upon 
the mountain side, before he went to Edinburgh and 
became used to saloons, as most favourable to the free- 
dom of his spirit. But the processes which the sower 
and reaper has to observe, though simpler and more 
august, are scarcely more exact and successive than 
those by which the rags grow into paper, or the pin is 
pointed and headed. There is a law regulating both. 
If we mean by a law of nature, that which exists inde- 
pendently of man and which he cannot transgress, to 
which he must adapt himself, then there is a law of 



III.] MONEY WORSHIP INCOMPATIBLE. 75 

nature for tlie stocking-weaver as well as for tlie grazier 
or tlie ploughman. 

I am told, and I can well believe, that some of our 
mechanics find an unspeakable delight in studying 
mathematics ; and that amidst the noise of mills, with 
scarcely any external help, they have made great pro- 
gress in them. The sense of succession and order has 
been so much cultivated in them by the pursuits in 
which they are continually engaged, there is such a 
witness to them of mighty laws bounding and defining 
all the material things with which they are conversant, 
that to find what they find in geometry, the actual prin- 
ciples to which they have been conforming themselves 
brought out in perfect sequence, must be a satisfaction 
such as we can scarcely dream of. I remember well 
how we used to remark at Cambridge the head and 
face of the Northern who was most likely to be 
fashioned into a ■wrangler. Evidently his preparation 
had been one of work, of converse with realities much 
more than of initiation into books. Many of us could 
scarcely understand what in the world we had to do 
with mathematics ; they mingled so little with the 
thoughts that had most occupied us. The Northern 
found in them answers to questions which he had 
encountered. He was not forming a first awkward 
acquaintance with unsympathisiug lines and circles ; 
they were old friends. The strict demonstration was 
the beautiful harmony of that which had been crude 
and discordant in his mind hitherto. 

If you read the biographies of such men as Arkwright 
,and Brindley, you may trace the curious and interesting 



76 LEARNING AND [LECT. 

process "by wliich those wlio have been busy only with 
coarse mechanical employments waken up to the per- 
ception of powers which they are themselves wielding, 
of laws which govern these powers, of the way in which 
the powers, intelligently and lawfully used, may produce 
the newest combinations and the mightiest effects. We 
who are dazzled by these combinations and effects, — in 
the case of Arkwright, especially I am afraid, by the 
gi-eat capital which he accumulated, — forget the painfal 
throes of discovery, the mysterious struggles in the man 
himself, before he could understand his own meaning, or 
bring it to light. But there are some who think the 
human soul more precious than the spinning-jenny. 
They will dwell upon the st<ips that led to the invention 
with more wonder and awe than upon all its material 
results. They will find in those steps, the hints of that 
Avhich exists hidden from others, hidden from himself, in 
every mechanic, and which it is worth more pains to 
call forth than to produce all the cotton which shall 
be produced while the world lasts. 

Let us then thoroughly assure ourselves, that there is 
nothing in industry itself of any kind, agricultural or 
manufacturing, nothing in the most steady, persevering, 
creative industry, to hinder steady, persevering, creative 
thouglit. It should be further understood, that there i^ 
nothing in the meeting together of a great number of 
men under one roof for the purpose of work, which can 
be unfavourable to their learning. That must be a vast 
advantage in every way. Intercourse must be better 
than solitary toil. The discipline and arrangement 
which arises from the apportionment of tasks to one 



III.] MOXEY WORSHIP IXCOMPATIBLE. 77 

and to another, must assist in cultivating those habits 
of order and of distinction which the student needs. 
ISTor can the toil be at all the worse, because it is pursued 
for the sake of a livelihood. That circumstance, taken 
by itself, gives greater solidity and earnestness to the 
labour, and to the mind of the labourer. And that this 
livelihood is not to be for the worker only, but for a wife 
and children, is an inconceivable blessing. Domestic 
sympathies afid hopes are everything to the nianual 
worker. They are everything, also, to the intellectual 
worker. Their close relationship to each other is proved 
in no way more clearly, than by the help and refresh- 
ment which both derive from this source. 

And yet — there is no use in concealing it — facts seem 
to show that, in this country, the class of mechanics as a 
class are not disposed to connect study with work, even 
when the greatest pains are taken and the most reason- 
able methods used, to point out the bond which there is 
between them. I will remind you of one or two experi- 
ments which have been made for this end, and of the 
success which has attended them. 

The Mechanics' Institute is entitled to the first place. 
We owe it to the benevolence and the wisdom of the 
late Dr. Birkbeck. The name denoted very success- 
fully the object of its founder. He was not providing 
an instruction for the poor as poor. He was not looking 
above the poor to the class of shopkeepers and trades- 
men. He was distinctly aiming at those who were 
working with their hands, or working with any other 
machine. He acknowledges them not as hands or as 
machines, but as men capable of being instituted or 



78 LEAENINa AND [lECT. 

educated into a knowledge of the work tliej were en- 
gaged in. That was evidently Dr. Birkbeck's object. 
He would have a race of intelligent craftsmen, of men 
who knew what they were about, who were not merely 
doing to-day what they did yesterday, because they did 
it yesterday. The idea is a most precious and fertile 
one. There is a hint in it which I ho23e to follow out 
in these Lectures, and which I am therefore most 
anxious that you should refer to the persoti, who did so 
much to give it form and to make it effectual in his 
own time. Thoughts having such a purpose could not 
be wasted, even if one plan or a hundred plans that 
were built on them proved abortions. But the Me- 
chanics' Institutes have not been abortive. They have 
produced good amidst great discouragement, while many 
of us, who should have taken part in them_, have looked 
on coldly and indifferently. To a certain class of young 
men in towns, they must often have been very service- 
able. The class, however, has not in general been the 
one which Dr. Birkbeck sought to help. The tradesman 
has rather taken the place of the mechanic. Of course, 
one does not grudge him this or any other intellectual 
privilege ; but the character of the teaching has been, I 
suspect, insensibly altered in consequence of the persons 
who receive it. They do not come to the lecture-room, 
so much to be instructed respecting the meaning of their 
own occupations, as to acquire general information on a 
great many topics. Hence there is frequently a com- 
plaint, that the lectures in Mechanics' Institutes (rather 
graze the surface of men's minds than penetrate into 
them.^ The evil will probably be much abated if the 



III.] MONEY WORSHIP INCOMPATIBLE. 79 

sclieme proposed Iby tlie Society of Arts takes effect, 
and the different institutions tlirougliout the land look 
to a common centre. Still it is scarcely to be hoped 
that they will ever supply the most serious necessities 
of the working people. We may be thankful enough, 
that they have borne and do bear witness to the existence 
of those necessities. 

The founders of the Evening Classes for Young Men 
have profited by the experience of the Mechanics' Insti- 
tutes, and have avoided their greatest danger. In them 
the pupils learn, and do not merely listen. The teacher 
gives lessons, not lectures. The experiment is a very 
noble one, and is a great step towards a methodical 
education. If the classes were more connected together, 
if the teachers thoroughly understood each other, they 
might be still more useful. But these classes consist, 
I believe, almost exclusively of clerks in offices and 
young men from shops. They are professedly for their 
use, and therefore they fulfil their object more com- 
pletely than the Institutes, which were meant for 
journeymen. 

Before these classes were commenced, an effort had 
been made, upon the success of which their success must 
mainly depend. If shops are open till eight or nine 
in the evening, the time which the shopmen or shop- 
women can have for improving themselves must be 
very short indeed, and their weariness must make that 
short time often nearly useless. Hence the movement for 
closing shops at six or seven. A more desirable object 
than this we can scarcely think of. The attempt has 
been as successful as its promoters had any right to 



80 LEARNING AND [leCT. 

expect it would Tbe, tliougli far less successful than its 
intrinsic merits and their zeal and fidelity entitled it to 
be. Like all attempts to remove a wrong and to do 
right, it has consequences beyond the immediate one at 
which it aims. To hear men asserting continually that 
the 2:ains of trade are not worth the sacrifice of the bodies 
and souls of those who are engaged in it, is very profit- 
able to us ; infinitely more profitable, because we are 
inclined to dismiss the assertion as a mere idle and 
tiresome truism which we all believe ; whereas we do 
not believe it, any of us. We may believe that it is 
very shocking for tradesmen to sell goods which cost 
the price of blood : but we do not think it at all 
shocking that we should buy at the same price, though 
abstinence must of course be far less serious to us. 
The great good the abettors of this movement have 
done and are doing, is that they appeal to the con- 
sciences of the consumers more than of the sellers ; that 
they remind each of us of his own responsibility, when 
we are inclined to shift it upon others. And they 
teach us, moreover, when we are about to make some 
great display of benevolence and self-sacrifice, that if 
we are really minded to help our fellow-creatures, very 
little acts, or the not doing certain things we have been 
in the habit of doing, would be immeasm*ably more to 
the purpose. 

But this scheme, though set on foot expressly for the 
purpose of enabling hard-worked men to obtain leisure 
for study in the evening, does not apply to mechanics. 
With them it is perhaps scarcely popular, since they 
are obliged to make any purchases which they have to 



III.] MONEY WOESHIP INCOMPATIBLE. 81 

make at tlie end of the day. Tliey have, however, begun 
to urge the importance of short hours in their own work. 
This was one of the principal demands in the engineering 
strike of the year before last. It was put expressly on 
the ground that the workmen had not time for the 
cidtivation of their miuds. I have no doubt that the 
argument was used sincerely, though possibly if the 
Tforking people felt that they were obtaining pecuniary 
benefit by longer liours they might not adhere to their 
own principle. Still they have distinctly confessed their 
need of further instruction; they have claimed the 
means of obtaining it at the hands of those who are using 
their work ; they have given us a right to say, ' We will 

* do our utmost that you may not be defrauded of that 

* which you agree with us in thinking is your rightful 

* inheritance.' 

This is an effort towards the union of Learning with 
Work from the side of the labourer. A still more sys- 
tematic effort to bring about this union has been made on 
the side of the employer. The conductors of the Belmont . 
Factory have not merely abridged the hours of labour 
for the sake of affording time for education. They 
have sanctioned the great principle which the Monas- 
teries first inculcated, that an alternation of Labour 
and Study is the proper law of human life. They have 
had the courage actually to carry this principle into 
practice. 'Noy have they confined themselves to the 
boys and girls of the establishment. Mr. Wilson's 
letters show that he is undertaking the education of 
adults in the noblest spirit. The mixture of manly 
exercises of the body with those of the mind, and the 

G 



82 LEARNING AND [LECT. 

thoroiiglily liUmaii character wliicli lias been thrown 
into the whole machinery, make this one of the most 
striking and pregnant experiments of onr time. 

But it will not he the blessing to us which it might 
he, if it does not lead us to reflect on the cause which 
has rendered most of the attempts to connect Work with 
Learning which we have made hitherto, so unsatisfactory. 
I have shown you that Learning has no necessary con- 
nexion with Leisure. But it has the most intimate 
connexion with Best. There cannot he two words 
which represent more different thoughts tlian these 
two ; there cannot be anything more perilous than the 
confusion of them. In the old degenerate Monasteries 
there was plenty of Leisure ; everybody was claiming 
it, seeking for it, inventing methods of enjoying it. 
But there was no Rest. There was endless hurry and 
weariness in pursuit of animal enjoyments, and in de- 
vising means to kill the time which hung so heavily. 
We see a number of men in the Universities, a number 
of men in London, with a prodigious weight of Leis\n-e, 
but they are certain to be the most restless people we 
•can encounter. On the other hand, if you think of the 
men to whose biographies I alluded in my last Lecture, 
you will find that the very painfulness of some of their 
occupations drove them to seek for a home and a resting- 
place, not by casting them aside, but in the very midst of 
them. Dante, Hooker, Milton, — it was the same with 
all. The outward world of worry and turbulence, in and 
for which they were to work, made it more abundantly 
necessary that they shoidd feel after and find an 
inner world of peace and quietness, to which their spirits 



III.] MONEY WOKSHIP INCOMPATIBLE. 83 

might retreat, wliicli they might feel was as truly their 
dwelling as the confused city or house, — as Florence witli 
its noisy parties, or Aldersgate Street with its noisy 
boys, — was tlic dwelling of their bodies. And this they 
felt to he no special privilege which belonged to them ; — 
they lived to vindicate it for alL They discovered that 
which the spirit of the stupidest man in Florence or 
London needed and was craving for. 

IN^ow all that education which had so miglity a power 
over England, which seemed at first to stand aloof from 
its different occupations, which then blended so won- 
derfully with them and sustained them, was effectual 
because it bore this testimony. Warring men were 
reminded by these schools of a Peace wliich did not 
imply the cessation from toil, — ' a central Peace sub- 
sisting at the heart of endless agitation.' They were 
led to perceive that there are two kingdoms, one of 
which is meant for us just as much as the other. How 
to bring them together, liow to hinder them from 
clashing and interfering with each other, was a great 
problem, the great problem of all. But each was always 
confessed to be necessary to tlie other ; and there was a 
secret assurance that if it was so, they could not be 
confined to two different sets of subjects ; that the 
same man must at the same time be a citizen of both, 
and that it was his mistake, not the mistake of the 
order in which he was placed, if there was any divided 
allegiance, any opposition of interests. 

This, it seems to me, is what we were bound to 
teach our working men, and this is what we have 
failed to teach them. We are under no obligation 

G 2 



84 LEARNING AND [lECT. 

whatever to tell tliem — the wise man forbids lis to tell 
tliem — that the former days were better than these. 
We might have shown them very clearly that these 
days are better than the former days ; better because 
they offer increased facilities for work ; better because 
we can understand more perfectly the principle which 
is imj)lied in work ; better because nominally and in 
theory at least we do not divide the schools from com- 
mon human life as they were once divided. But we 
can only maintain this boast of superiority, if we regard 
every man, more thoroughly than our ancestors did, 
as capable of receiving a wisdom that cannot be 
gotten for gold, and which the gold and the crystal 
cannot equal. 

Instead of doing this, we have done, I fear, the re- 
verse of this. We have led the labourer to think tliat 
the wisdom we possess, and of which we would give 
a portion to him, can be gotten for gold ; and that its 
value can be represented very accurately in gold or 
silver or copper measures. Whatever kind of instruc- 
tion we have offered and recommended to him, we have 
tried by this scale. ^ If you will only acquire these 

* fragments of physical information, who can tell you 

* that you may not be as rich as Sir Eichard Arkwright ? 

* If you only make yourself master of these dogmas of 

* political economy, what advantage you will have over 

* those about you, who know nothing of the laws which 
' regulate wages ! If you will but let your children 
'■ swallow these lumps of divinity, there are examples 

* without end of well-behaved boys who were sent to 

* College, and became in due time Prebendaries and 



III.] MONEY WORSHIP INCOMPATIBLE. 85 

^ Deans, to saj nothing of richer stalls that may be 
' reserved for them in some other state of existence/ With 
these and the like pious frauds, together with the com- 
fortable assurance, in the last case, that if they will 
receive our wisdom they will be saved from the danger 
of being too wise, we have stuffed the ears of those to 
whom we might have held out promises and hopes of 
quite a different kind, — promises and hopes which would 
not have proved, as these do, utterly disappointing in the 
millionth case in which they are literally fulfilled, — 
promises and hopes which do not lead one of our fellow- 
creatures to think that he is fortunate only when he 
obtains that which others cannot have. 

These arguments, if they stood by themselves, would 
confute themselves. The working people would have 
sense to laugh at them ; the only effect of our using them 
would be, that we should increase the suspicion of our 
honesty which they entertain already. But they conspire 
with a multitude of other influences which are tending 
to make Work not that brave, noble occupation of 
men's hands, which is so beneficial to the labour and 
the rest of their minds, but a feverish effort to pro- 
duce quickly that which may look well, and be puffed 
largely, and be sold at a low rate, to the great loss of 
the purchaser. The sense of responsibility which 
led the Greek to be as diligent in working out that 
part of the statue which would be hidden by the wall 
of the temple as that part which would be exposed 
to the eye, because the gods would look upon both, 
seems to have departed from Christendom, which should 
cherish it most. The flimsy texture which cannot 



SQ . LEARNINa AND [lECT. 

instantly be discovered — the carelessness wliicli will only 
cause some boiler to explode in a distant ocean, where 
no one will hear who has perished — is considered no 
outrage upon the modern morality, to which we are 
training our workmen because we have first imbibed it 
ourselves. 

I am not now to point out the different forms of this 
trade morality, and to show you how it is affecting all 
kinds of industry. That has been done frequently and 
with great ability, by persons who have a much more 
experimental acquaintance with the subject than I have. 
I am referring to these maxims now only as they bear 
upon the education of the working classes. I wish you 
to feel that they are great and permanent hindrances to 
that education; that to all intents and purposes they 
make it impossible, by making the ends at which it 
should aim unintelligible, and by turning the means 
tliat would promote these ends into the destruction of 
them. 

If steady work is favourable to Education, unsteady 
work, — gambling work, — (it is almost profaneness to join 
two such words together,) must be the most fatal obstacle 
to it. And the truth must be spoken. We are becoming 
a nation of gamblers. Life is beginning to be regarded 
as a shuffling of cards, as a throwing of. dice. We do 
not ask what we are to do, but what is likely to turn 
up, if we make such and such a cast. Handicrafts, 
Trades, Professions, are to be undertaken upon a calcu- 
lation of chances, not from the sense of a vocation. 
How can we think quietly, how can we pursue science, 
which only converses witli that whicli is, while our 



III.] MONEY WORSHIP INCOMPATIBLE. 87 

whole iiiinds are busy with possibilities and coutiu- 
gencies ? 

I state the case in this way, because I wish you ear- 
nestly to reflect, 1st. That precisely the same disease 
which is affecting the working class, is affecting all 
classes ; 2d. That the disease has its root in a habit of 
mind, which is communicated from the higher classes to 
the working class ; 3d. That there is no way so effectual 
of restoring the whole of society to its right tone, as by 
doing what in us lies for the reformation of this portion 
of it. 

We often hear complaints of the habits which young 
men contract at College, and of the tolerance of these 
habits by their superiors there. Believe me, you can 
do more to correct and cure those habits than all the 
Tutors and Heads of Houses in the world. If you take 
care that the notion shall be checked among all over 
whom you have influence, that Money is the measure of 
worth : that professions exist for the sake of the Money 
which they bring in ; that the acquisition and the accu- 
mulation of it is the purpose for which men are to live 
and die, you will be laying your axe to the root of an 
evil from Avhich the best sumptuary regulations can 
only cut off a few branches, if they do not^ as is some- 
times the case, promote its growth. Now that vulgar 
belief which is tending to the degradation of the higher 
study among us, and of all those noble pursuits which 
directly draw their life from study, is the very one which 
is making trade insincere and false, the very one wliich 
is reducing the labourer into a serf. I use that last- 
phrase advisedly. I wisli it to be taken literally, 



88 LEARNING AND [lECT. 

and I will try to explain wliy it is not an exaggerated 
one. 

Mr. Soutliey, when lie wrote liis ^ Colloquies on the 
State and Prospects of Society/ had a singular advantage. 
As he was sitting in his study at Keswick, he received 
a visit from the shade of Sir Thomas More, who brought 
the wisdom of the sixteenth century to hear on the cir- 
cumstances of the nineteenth. I cannot claim the 
benefit of any similar instruction. Ghosts in our days 
choose both the places and persons they shall visit 
judiciously. Sir Thomas More knew that he should 
find at Keswick both a goodly prospect and a most 
intellia'cnt auditor. But I find in the MSS. of a friend, 
not very legibly written, the report of a conversation 
which he states himself to have had in a railway caniage 
with some person, whom he describes so mysteriously 
that he may, for aught I can affirm to the contrary, have 
been a humble contemporary of More, though the style of 
his discourse may not justify me in attributing it to him 
or any other accomplished scholar. After some vague 
and not very intelligible account of his companion's out- 
ward appearance, my friend says, ' You will not wonder 

* that I was somewhat startled by his first speech. He 
' pronounced very emphatically these words, which he 
' was reading, I presume, out of a newspaper^ " Freedom, 
^ Civilization, Commerce ! " and then added, " Humph ! 

* These this learned Theban says are the glories of 
' England. She will not have any one of the three 

* fifty years hence." I was silenced for a moment by 

* this outrageous ejaculation ; then, remembering the 

* book I held in my hand, I asked him whether it had 



III.] MONEY WOESHIP INCOMPATIBLE. 89 

been liis good fortune to read " Uncle Tom's Cabin? " 
He said, " He knew what was in it." Whether he had 
arrived at his knowledge by the ordinary methods, or 
by some magnetical intuition, he did not explain* 
" And yet you think that England is less free, or likely 
to be less free, than other nations?" "What is there 
in that book to cure me of such an opinion?" " What! 
Does not a particularly intelligent and patriotic writer, 
belonging to the country which calls itself, and is called 
by Europe generally, the freest in the world, speak of 
us and of our possessions as the refuge for the slaves 
whom America keeps in bondage? Is that no evidence 
in our favour?" "Does Mrs. Stowe," he rejoined, 
" explain to you in what Freedom, according to her 
judgment of it, consists ? " " Very clearly. She 
makes it evident that a certain class of beings in the 
United States are treated as things, not as persons. 
Therefore, they are subjects of Law only so far as its titles 
have respect to things. They are not eligible to Educa- 
tion, because Education can only deal with persons. 
She does not deny that the maxim on which slavery 
rests often undergoes the greatest modifications in 
practice ; happily it contradicts others which men con- 
fess, and upon which they are obliged in a multitude 
of cases to act. But she proves that it exists, and 
that it is productive of the most frightful social anoma- 
lies." " Admirable ! " said my companion ; " there 
never was a better account of slavery than that. It is, 
however, one that you need not have waited to receive 
from the new world. The history of the old world 
would have taught it to you. The emancipation of any 



90 LEAENING AND [LECT. 

* people from serfdom, of whatever kind it be, had tliis 
' ground and no other. If there was a sufficiently clear 
' and strong testimony that the man, as such, was different 
' in kind from the earth on which he worked, from the 
^ tools which he used, from the sheep and oxen which he 
' tended, then in due time he ceased to be a serf. The 
' collar which signified that he belonged to such and 
' such an estate, to such and such a lord, fell off. Pos- 
' sibly he began to be a freeholder, not only tilling 
' certain acres, but able to transmit them to his children^ 
' or to hand over the clod to some other who acquired 
' the same privilege. More probably he held it under 
^ some obligations of service to a lord, who owed services 
' on his side, the acres under that condition being also 
' transmissible. Or he may have held the land at a given 
' price, for a certain term ; or he may have held it at 

* the pleasure of the owner; or he may have had nothing 
' to do with land at all ; but may have exchanged his 
' strength and dexterity and experience, for food and 
' raiment, or a dwelling, or the money that was their 
' equivalent. Often he may have failed in any one of 

* these positions to assert his personal rights, or to secure 
'• the law as a protector of them. But it was understood 
' in all cases that he was free, not because he was a 
' holder of land or because he received wages, but tliat 
' he was able to hold land and to exact payment for 
' what he did, because he was in essentials like the 

* landlord, a moral responsible being even as he was." 

'•'The priest," I interrupted him, "had great in- 
' fluence in procuring this emancipation." " No doubt,"^ 

* he rejoined. " The priest cared little for the laws of 



III.] MONEY WOESHIP INCOMPATIBLE. 91 

particular states, but he claimed all wlio had the human 
form and features as belonging to a mysterious king- 
dom or divine brotherhood. Where he had faith and 
courage to enforce the claim vigorously and effec- 
tually, he found other influences, often apparently 
clashing and contradictory influences, cooperating to 
bring the goatherd or swineherd, who had always sup- 
posed himself a little better than the goats and swine he 
waited on, into the state of one whom the law guarded, 
and of whom it demanded obedience. But often the 
first emancipation consisted in bringing him to the 
school ; he became a student before he became a citizen. 
Of the two, that was felt to be the higher testimony 
to his personality." " The priest," I replied, " must 
often have repented of his own achievem'cnts." "As- 
suredly," said the stranger, '^he was raising up the 
stoutest champions against his own assumptions, when 
he sought to deal with human beings as if they were 
not persons ; as if they had not a higher responsibility 
than to him. He could only break the bonds of the 
serf, in the name of God ; by asserting that he claimed 
all as His free servants and children. If he was dis- 
posed, for the sake of his own authority, again to 
controvert that doctrine, it was found too mighty for 
him ; the principle once uttered could no more contract 
itself to suit his convenience, than the principle which 
was uttered in Runnymede could contract itself to the 
dimensions which the barons might have thought 
ample enough for it. Principles are terrible things to 
sport with." 
' "Well," I said, " when one thinks of the state of those 



92 LEARNING AND [LECT. 

countries in which tlie voice of the priest has had no 
effect in emancipating the serf, and where, consequently, 
he may count upon the unbounded reverence of both 
serf and lord, though his own character and intellect 
should be ever so degraded, one may rejoice to live in 
a land where his order has been one means of raising 
men to a position, in which they must and will despise 
him, unless he continues to labour in different circum- 
stances for the same object." 

* " Rejoice as you will," replied my unknown com- 
panion, '' but answer me plainly. Do you in England 
attach that sense to Freedom which connects it with the 
distinction of Persons and Things ? A Freeman, so ftir 
as I can make out your dialect, signifies in it, one who 
is not a Slave, and a Slave signifies one who does not 
receive wages. Thus the labourer is led to define 
himself, as his superiors have already defined him, 
— a wages-receiving animal. That is his great and 
permanent distinction in God's universe. By that 
sign he is known from the rest of the genus Mam- 
malia. Hence he comes to conceive that the great 
end of those who do not belong to his order in creation, 
is to prevent liim from rising into theirs, and to 
keep down his wages while he continues where he 
is. Laws often appear to him to have been con- 
structed and to be maintained, chiefly for this end. 
Literature, he believes, has ministered to the same 
end very effectually, in those who possess it. He 
would like to remake the laws, because he might then 
have a chance of raising himself to the level of those 
who he believes are depressing him. He would like to 



III.] MONET WORSHIP INCOMPATIBLE. 93 

obtain education tliat his labour may fetch more in the 
market, that it may at last obtain for itself that which 
he thinks has been granted to its enemies." " This 
may be the state of mind among some of the working 
people/' I said; " I am sure it is not among all." 
" Thank God," he replied, " that it is not ; and if that 
better mind dwells also in your divines, economists, 
statesmen — if they do not regard wages as the cha- 
racteristic difference between the free labourer and the 
serf — you may yet retain the best and worthiest of 
your three treasures ; if not, was I not wrong in fixing 
so long a term as fifty years for your tenure of a gift 
which you have already forfeited? " 
' I mused on the prophecy, half in sadness, half in 
an2:er, and did not for some time allude to the second 
word. But, like Mr. Tennyson, " we waited for the 
train at Coventry," — a delay which, alas ! was to pro- 
duce no Lady Godiva, — and then I asked him " whether 
he had not seen enough in our journey from the great 
to"svns of the ISTorth, to convince him that our Civilization 
at least had reached a very high pitch, and was based 
upon a very strong foundation " " Its high pitch," he 
said, " I never disputed." " It is the soundness of the 
foundation, then, you question ?" " K"o ! " he replied, " I 
believe your civilization has a very deep foundation. 
There," pointing me to the Court-house in Coventry, 
" you may read, better than in Guizot, the story of its 
origin and of its grovv^th. You will find in the verses 
round the walls an account of the way in which our 
ancestors became civil, because they became citizens. 
You will see how closely the rise of our manufacturing 



94 LEARNING AND [lECT. 

industry was connected witli the feelings of citizenship, 
of a common corporate life of union and fellow work." 
" I suppose," I said, "the life in Coventry was some- 
thing like the life in Ghent, which Mr. Taylor has so 
well described to us in his Philip Van Artevelde. And 
yet in the quotation from Hobbes with which he 
introduces it, he speaks of ' the absence of arts, letters, 
society — of the life of men as solitary, poor, nasty, 
brutish, and short/ " " I think," he said, " Mr. Taylor's 
poem is immeasurably better than his quotation, and 
is the true comment upon it. There was brutishness 
enough in these citizens ; but what brutes they would 
have been — you would have been — if they had not 
sought for that corporate life ; if they had not aspired to 
the dignity and responsibility of citizens ! Now, do 
you mean this by civilization — you Englishmen of the 
nineteenth century ? Do you not mean just the reverse 
of this by it? Do you not mean exactly that life 
which is so solitary, and brutish, and nasty ; the life 
of men not working together, but working against 
each other, in strife and rivalry and hatred ? And do 
you seriously believe that a civilization so inconsistent 
with the principle out of which it has grown — which 
is implied in its continuance — can last fifty years ?" 
' I had one last resource, and I felt it was a strong one. 
I suspected my friend of being a Protectionist. I was 
prepared to overthrow him, with statistics about our 
commercial progress. To my astonishment, he ex- 
pressed unbounded sympathy with my assertion that 
every nation was to seek help from every other ; that 
the policy of trying to favour our own productions, and 



III.] MONEY WORSHIP INCOMPATIBLE. '95 

* to proliibit or check the introduction of those of foreign 
' lands, was suicidal. He was willing to admit that the 
<■ freeest and largest intercourse was the best ; that in 

* maintaining it to be so, we are Aviser than our fore- 
' fathers. " Well, then ? " I said. " Well, sir, and there- 

* fore^ because you have cast aside all rivalry between 
' nations ; because you deem the emancipation from it 
' the greatest achievement of your age ; therefore you 

* will use your commerce only to promote the most 

* wea1*isome, exhausting, destructive rivalry between 
' your own subjects ; to make every member of a house- 
*■ hold the rival, and in the end the destroyer of every 
^ other ! That is the Commerce which is to sustain itself 

* for fifty years ! " ' 

I have quoted the words of this mysterious critic upon 
our country's condition, because I believe they express 
the thoughts of a great many foreigners who look at it 
with no unfriendly eyes, and of many a native who feels 
for it with the anxiety and tenderness of a lover or a 
child. They have led a few to adopt conclusions and to 
enter upon courses of action, which probably you Avill 
not approve, and which I am not here to defend, though 
I am bound to express my hearty sympathy with them. 
To deliver the working people from the notion that they 
are merely wages-receiving animals, and their superiors 
in rank and position from the corresponding degradation 
of being regarded as merely wages-paying animals, it 
has seemed to them worth while to try whether bodies 
of workmen might not be associated, for their own 
profit, under a government not less strict, but more 
paternal, than that to which they are ordinarily sub- 



96 LEARNING AND [LECT, 

jected. It lias struck tliem, that almost any risk should 
be incurred, and of course the very trifling risk of being 
called hard and ugly names, for the sake of making the 
labourers understand that citizenship is a reality, that 
civilization is not a curse, that the same power which 
enabled their forefathers to w^ork together in spite of all 
the tendencies to solitude and rivalship in the four- 
teenth century, can enable them to overcome the same 
tendencies, in the more fortunate circumstances of the 
nineteenth. They have thought it not unimportant to 
show that the principle of Trade is reciprocity, not 
overreaching. I have alluded to this subject because I 
should be dishonest if I did not confess that I think the 
reformation must begin at both ends, that we must raise 
Work to make it fit for association with Learning, as well 
as bring Learning to bear upon Work. But I am far 
indeed from thinking that these schemes, or any schemes, 
have any virtue of their own. Their one use is, that 
they may help to raise the workman to a sense of man- 
hood and freedom ; to the feeling that he is a person 
and not a thing, a citizen and not a slave. If you 
can accomplish that end without these means, — if 
you can make us who resort to them look ridiculous 
and contemptible, by the better machinery which you 
bring into play, by the higher spirit w^ith which you 
set it in motion — God speed you! I am trying to 
show you that there is another method, quite different 
from the one which I have hinted at, by whicli you may 
improve the social position of the mechanic and secure 
your own. If you acknowledge him as not merely 
entitled to receive certain crumbs of knowledge which 



III.] MONEY WOESHIP INCOMPATIBLE. 97 

fall from the ricli man's table, to a scrap here and there 
of irregular, disjointed learning, which is rather a 
bm'den to his spirit than a power to raise it, but as 
intended to share with you the deepest and most uni- 
versal part of your treasures, those which belong not to 
classes but to men ; if you will dispense these regularly 
and methodically as if they were portions of our com- 
mon food, which must be received, and which belong 
to the life of us all ; if you will follow out the hint 
which Mr. Wilson has given you, and consider that 
you are making the labour of the hands most effectual 
when you turn the factory into a school and a home ; 
then indeed you may boast that you are doing infi- 
nitely more than all our little efforts, whether rea- 
sonable or unreasonable, whether rightly or wrongly 
directed, have done yet, or could do, if they were ever 
so much extended, to save the land from serfdom and 
barbarism. And this I urge not only, not even chiefly, 
for the sake of those who toil and suffer, but for the 
sake of those who possess and enjoy. I tremble lest 
those whose station most demands of them nobleness 
and chivalry, should shrink into money-getters and 
money-changers. That calamity will be averted if you 
will resolve to teach the hardest hands that they were 
created for other uses than these. God will give man- 
hood to the nobles and gentlemen of England, when they 
assert that the highest manhood, and therefore that gen- 
tleness and nobility, may be called forth in those who 
are not of higher origin than our tinker poet Bunyan, 
or than that illustrious Scotsman of our day, Hugh 

II 



98 LEAEXING AND ]\rONEY WOESHIP, ETC. [lECT. 

liiller ; wlio are not richer in tliis AYorld's goods tliau 
were the fishermen of Galilee.* 

* The fears with which this Lecture concludes would not have been 
expressed m the same terms, if it had been delivered in Xovember or 
December instead of June. The nobles and gentlemen of England 
have shown that the old manhood is in them : the private has 
abundantly vindicated his share in that manhood. God be thanked 
for drawing such blessings out of such sorrow ! God be thanked for 
giving us signs and tokens that there is a common heart in the land 
still ! There is enough of miserable partisanship, suspicion, frivolity 
in us all, to keep us ashamed ; enough of personal and national misery 
to make vaunting and self-glorification more than ever unseemly and 
monstrous. But the treasure which we thought we had lost, is proved 
to have been only hidden. Let us take care that the Mammon altar 
which it has needed, and may need, so much suffering and blood to 
throw down, shall not be built again. We have asked another God 
than the money god to lead our hosts. Let us swear that, neither in 
peace nor in war, shall he reign in our senate, our colleges, or our 
Jiearts. 



IV.] LEARNING THE MINISTER OF FEEEDOjL, ETC. 09 



LECTURE IV. 

LEARI^ING THE MINISTER OF FREEDOM AND ORDER. 

It will seem to many of you tliat I have greatly 
increased the difficulties of tlie subject I am considering, 
by the view which I took of Education in my last Lec- 
ture. I spoke of an education which should not be 
merely a supplement to work, but should be incorporated 
with it ; of an education which should speak to those who 
received it, of rest in the midst of toil, even while it 
demanded from them toil of another kind ; of an educa- 
tion which should make them feel, that the spirit in them 
has a world of its own, which is as real as that which 
their senses tell them of. Such language will sound, I 
doubt not, to a number of practical men, very mystical 
and absurd, not the less so because I produced evidence 
that an education such as I described was the one 
which our forefathers established in this country, the 
one which our old schools and colleges with their nio- 
nastical and picturesque associations remind us of, if 
they do not impart it. ' That would be a decisive 
' proof,' I shall be told, ' were proofs necessary, that 

II 2 

L. OT ^. 



loo LEARNING THE MINISTER OF [lECT. 

' ice want something altogether different. The age tliat 

* gave birth to those institutions was an age of dreamers ; 
' ours is one of workers. To reproduce the temper of 

* that time, is happily impossible ; to reproduce the 
' forms of it, is ridiculous. We are born among factories 

* and railways, and we must make the best of them 
That last proposition expresses my own abiding convic- 
tion. I believe we are born among factories and rail- 
ways, and that it is good for us that we are. Far from 
participating in the contempt which some whom I admire 
have expressed for them, I believe that they are gifts of 
God, and reasons for thankfulness, just as beautiful 
cathedrals and beautiful paintings are. I have ex- 
pressed already a profound reverence for the achievements 
of modern industry, and have maintained that the learning 
which despises or overlooks them, which does not adapt 
itself to our circumstances, which merely dresses itself 
out in the garments of the past, cannot be sound or good 
learning. Nevertheless I fully expect that these profes- 
sions, however sincere I may know and you may believe 
them to be, necessarily as they are involved in my argu- 
ments against the worshippers of Leisure, will prove 
light as air when weighed against that one tremendous 
word, ' Mystical. ' Every aged trader in newspaper en- 
chantments knows the efficacy of that word; he communi- 
cates it to the young apprentice as a spell which, though 
it has been well worked, has still more power than any 
other to frighten comfortable men not prone to ordi- 
nary superstitions, as well as timid women. I fully 
appreciate the wisdom of those wlio put this epithet in 
the front rank, when tliey seek to demolish a project, a 



IV.] FREEDOM AND ORDER. 101 

book, or a character ; it will do tlie work of a liuudre 
facts and of a tlioiisand arguments. 

But though the public listens and trembles whenever 
this word is pronounced, it does not follow that an edu- 
cation possessing somewhat of the ' mystical ' character is 
a^lways the least popular amongst us. Twenty-five years 
ago, if half-a-dozen intelligent people, acquainted with 
the tendencies, the strength, the deficiencies of the Eng- 
lish character, had been asked what studies would be 
most likely — what would be least likely — to spread 
amongst us, especially amongst our manual workers, 
they might have given different answers to the first half 
of the question according to their tastes and propensities. 
One might have urged the teaching of arithmetic, an- 
other of mechanics, a third of economics. But there 
would have been no dispute about the last half of it. 
They would have said one and all, ' Whatever other 
' instruction you give, leave the fine arts alone. They 
' belong to the South. There they have ripened under 

* the warm sunshine both of ecclesiastical and state pa- 
' tronage ; there men in the highest classes cultivate 
' them, men in the lowest admire them. The sensuous 

* worship gives them a sacred character ; they become 
' associated with the vulgarest amusements of the pea- 
' santry. Everything in the social condition of our 
' people, in their hard practical temper, in their religious 
' services, is hostile to this sort of cultivation.' And if 
it occurred to any of the party that possibly some un- 
washed Morland or Blake or Gainsborough might be 
dwelling in some unvisited corner of our land, a reluctant 
exception would perhaps have been made in favour of 



102 LEARNING THE MINISTER OF [lECT. 

Drawing, only that the testmiony might be more strong 
against the possibility of Ihisic ever obtaining the slight- 
est hold upon our people. How clearly it would have been 
explained to us, why voice and ear have been denied to 
the inhabitant of this island, and why, on the whole, we 
should rejoice in our freedom from the temptations to 
which they would expose us ! What a number of in- 
^'enious theories about races would have been introduced 
to remove any lingering discontent with our allotment ! 
And if these theories dwelt a little too strongly upon the 
effect of Italian sweetness and Roman Catholic worship, 
and so left the fact unexplained that Protestant Germany, 
with anything but a soft tongue, anything but a warm 
devotion, had nevertheless given birth to eminent com- 
posers and to a people musically inclined, I need not 
tell any one Avho knows from experience the elasticity of 
these philosophical explanations, how easily they would 
have expanded to take in this new and troublesome case — 
the speculative or mystical character of Germany always 
coming in as a resource to prevent us from building any 
vain hopes upon our community of blood. Well, it has 
appeared in the result, that these clear and irresistible 
reasonings belong to the same class with the solutions 
which the members of the Royal Society, shortl}^ after 
its foundation, sent in to the celebrated problem of 
Charles II. respecting the fish which did not displace 
the water. There was no problem to be solved; the 
fact so well accounted for was not a fact. 

Of all experiments in English education, beyond com- 
parison the most successful has been that for diffusing a 
knowledge of music and a love of music among our 



IV.] FEEEDOM AND OEDEE. 103 

people. The Mechanics' Institutes have attracted a few 
men here and there, and those generally not mechanics ; 
the classes of Mr. Hullah have brought thousands toge- 
ther of both sexes, in London and in every part of 
England. Every order down to the lowest has felt the 
impulse. I am credibly informed that instead of merely 
hearing lectures about singing, numbers have actually 
learned to sing. I am sure no one can look at their 
faces at one of their great meetings, and not perceive 
with what hearty delight and with what comparative 
indifference to mere display and effect, they exercise 
tlieir gift. 

I am willing to admit that this proof is not absolutely 
decisive. There has been no one working in any other 
department of popular education with the same thorough 
zeal and geniality which Mr. Hullah has thrown into 
this. We cannot tell that the same energy exerted else- 
where might not have produced results as remarkable. 
Let us assume that it might have done so, and hope 
that it will do so yet. But men generally appear 
when they are wanted, to do the thing that wants to be 
done. There have been indications in various quarters 
that a craving both for instrumental and vocal music 
has been awakened among mechanics in London*and the 
provinces, indications which I believe we ought to con- 
sider as distinctly providential. Few persons have less 
motive to estimate them highly than I have ; few, from 
utter ignorance of the whole subject, would be more in- 
clined to overlook them. But it is impossible not to con- 
fess that they are the most significant facts which have yet 
come under our notice, facts which from their strange- 



104 LEARNING THE MINISTER OF [LECT. 

ness and their inconsistency with all our anticipations^ 
require to be reflected on. Music will never, surely, 
occupy a most conspicuous place in any good scheme 
of education. But if it has taken stronger hold of those 
whom we desire to educate, than any other study has 
done, especially if it has laid hold of them when we 
thought that any other study was more in agreement 
with their previous tastes and habits of mind, there 
must be something in it which may help us to under- 
stand what is needed in all studies, something which 
m.ay deepen and widen our thoughts respecting the 
nature of education itself. I need hardly tell you that 
it is no novelty to think thus ; that it is an opinion which 
carries as great a weight of authority in its favour as 
any we can adopt. One whole book of ' Plato's Re- 
public' is given to the subject of music as an instru- 
ment of education. He was but commenting on a pur- 
suit which already formed a capital part of his country's 
discipline ; and he felt that portion of it to be so im- 
portant for good and for evil — he felt that besides being 
Athenian it was so Greek, and that besides being Greek 
it was so human — that a careful criticism of the kinds of 
music which were likely to nerve and elevate, or to 
weaken and lower the character, was not out of place in 
a work written to teach Athenians, Greeks, and men, 
the principles on which they must live together, 
and the methods by which they might become practi- 
cally united. Strictly in the spirit of Plato, but still 
more in the spirit of those Hebrew sages from whom 
he had learned his highest wisdom, Milton insists in his 
Letter to Mr. Hartlib, that the pupils in his imaginary 



IV.] FEEEDOM AND OEDEK. 105 

college should ' recreate and compose their, travailed 
' spirits with the solemn and divine harmonies of music 

* heard or learnt, either while the skilful organist plies 
' his grave and fancied descant in lofty fugues, or the 

* whole symphony with artful and unimaginable touches 
' adorn and grace the well-studied chords of some choice 

* composer ; sometimes the lute or soft organ stop wait- 

* ing on elegant voices either to religious, martial, or 
' civil ditties, which if wise men and prophets be 

* not extreamly out, have a gi-eat power over disposi- 
' tions and manners, to smooth and make them gentle 
^ from rustick harshness and distempered passions.' 
It is pleasant to have the strength of such names and 
such words ; yet, I must repeat it, I do not touch upon 
the subject in deference to them, or from a wish to copy 
the older schools of England, but because the me- 
chanics of the nineteenth century are manifesting 
their desire for these influences, and because it greatly 
imports us to inquire what is the root of this desire, 
as vv^ell as how it may be unfolded, and led to em- 
brace other objects not less lovingly and cordially 
than this. 

To understand this question rightly, you must put 
yourselves in the place, not exactly of some utterly 
dull and incapable listener like myself, but, of some 
simple clown, all whose work has been of the roughest 
kind, but who has had a father and mother, perhaps a 
wife and children, and who possesses the strange power 
which it has never occurred to him to think about, of 
recollecting that which has been in his own life, of anti- 
cipating that which shall be. Very strange! This 



106 LEARNING THE MINISTER OF [LECT. 

clown is a creature tliat looks before and after. All 
the economy of his existence is adapted to one pos- 
sessing these faculties ; he is descended from those who 
are in their graves ; those are climbing his knees who 
will be playing or working on this earth when he is in 
Ms grave. I cannot tell what these strange sounds^ so 
unlike the ordinary discourse which he hears when he 
is talking about the weather, or buying and selling in 
the market, mean to him, wdiat kind of message they 
carry to him ; but I am quite sure it has something to 
do with these memories and hopes and fears of his ; 
that it joins itself to a number of vague feelings which 
he has had about other days, and about faces which he 
has seen and hands which he has pressed ; that it gives 
them a kind of distinctness which they had not before. 
I cannot explain how this comes to pass, and I am sure 
he could not. The music speaks to something wdthin 
him w^hich the ordinary language does not speak to, 
something more near his own very self, touching wires 
wdiich that language does not reach, and making them 
vibrate. If any one likes to call this a mystical expres- 
sion, he is at full liberty to do so. I might justify 
myself by saying that Hartley, whose philosophy is the 
idol of some of our practical people, uses the same 
phraseology ; that he has a much more complete theory 
of vibrations than I can even dream of. But I put 
forward no such justification. I will give up my mode 
of stating the case as mystical and good for nothing, the 
moment you will furnish me with another which de- 
scribes the facts more adequately. I only desire to get 
them acknowledged. This Memory, which the ancients 



lY.] FEEEDOM AND ORDEE. 107 

called the mother of arts, may not be that, but a very 
Yiilgar simple thing, which we can all define and mider- 
stand. This Hope, with which not only the bloom but 
the substance of our being seems to be involved, may, 
when it is submitted to a satisfactory analysis, shrink 
into a very obvious, intelligible, unmarvellous quality ; 
I have no doubt that it will. But I am not speaking of 
cither in this refined state ; I am speaking of them 
as they rise in the heart of a day labourer. To him 
ifiey are wonderful ; and the music which mingles so 
curiously and intricately with them, is wonderful also. 
It must depend, I suppose, very much upon the care of 
those who provide it for him, whether it shall awaken 
only some slight and momentary titillation of pleasure, 
or the deepest and most energetic thoughts ; whether it 
shall be impressed into the service of his ordinary habits 
of thinking and acting, and receive its shape and hue 
from them, or shall be instrumental in raising them and 
giving them a nobler form and brighter colouring ; 
whether it shall be the vision of an occasional luxury 
which the rich man may enjoy to surfeiting — he only at 
rare intervals — or whether it shall speak to him of a 
divine order which was before the discords of earth 
began, which works on in tlie midst of them, and into 
which the pure of heart, who prefer their human heritage 
to any other, may freely enter. Yet even the vulgarest 
street music is an education to the hearts of those who 
stand at the doors of pestilential dwellings to listen to 
it. Till that day which shall unseal all pent-up words 
and reveal the secrets of all hearts, it may not be known 
what thoughts have been stirred up in human spirits by 



108 LEARNING THE MINISTER OF [LECT. 

sounds that fell utterly dead upon our ears; what 
authentic tidings of invisible things came to them 
through those channels when other avenues seemed to 
be closed ; what awakenings of conscience, what aspi- 
rations after truths never yet perceived, what search for 
treasures that had been lost. Some of the most beau- 
tiful passages of modern as of ancient poetry turn upon 
the stories of fishermen and shepherds who were tempted 
by siren visions, that spoke to them of some fairer 
regions, for which it were well to desert the dreariness 
of their earthly occupations, even at the risk of plunging 
into the deep. Besides the wonderful ballad of the 
German poet, there is that exquisite passage in Mr. 
Landor's ' Gebir,' — 

* But I have sinuous sliells of pearly hue 
Within ; and they that lustre have imbibed 
In the sun's palace porch, where when tinyoked 
His chariot wheel stands midway in the wave. 
Shake one, and it awakens ; then apply 
Its polish'd lips to your attentive ear, 
And it remembers its august abodes, 
And murmurs as the ocean murmurs there.' 

I feel that the beauty of such conceptions lies in their 
essential truth. The shepherds and fishermen of our 
land, as of every land, hear these whispers,, have these 
dreams. They need an interpreter ; if they do not find 
one, they may give heed to any tempter who would lead 
them into the most perilous depths or the most wretched 
shallows. The last calamity is the greater of the two. 
To have any gratification for such longings is almost 
better than to have them stifled and killed. 

I trust, then, you will see why I attach such import- 



IV.] FEEEDOM AND ORDEE. 109 

ance to this movement towards musical education. 
First, because it is useless to impart what men are not 
willing to receive, and here is an index of what thej 
are willing to receive. Secondly, because it seems to me 
a most healthful instinct which has led them, while com- 
paratively indiiferent to much that has been offered to 
them, to select what we perhaps should have called a 
mere amusement or gratification. If the higher classes 
have made it a mere amusement or gratification, so 
much the worse for them. I believe to the working 
people it must be more than that, or it will not be that. 
But I trace in this appetite for music cravings, which 
I believe to be the deepest that there are in man, 
— the most indispensable to every Englishman, — the 
cravings for freedom and for order, I believe that all 
education is intended to excite these cravings, and to 
meet them ; that only so far as it effects these objects 
does it deserve its name. 

This is no new doctrine. We have 'all of us pro- 
claiijied in one form or another our belief that freedom 
is not merely a collateral blessing of education, a con- 
dition on which it exists, but that it is the end at which 
it aims. For. instance, we have most of us spoken 
some strong words about the Jesuit schools. If these 
words expressed a censure of the plans which are 
adopted in the Jesuit schools, they were not justifiable ; 
for all plans must be considered in reference to the 
purpose which they are designed to accomplish, and 
tried by that standard I imagine few would be fomid 
more ingenious or perfect than those which this order 
has devised. If, again, they convey a oose condemna- 



110 LEAIININC; TIIK MINISTKli OF \\a:("V. 

lion of all llic Iciu-liiiii^wliicli lias exi.stc.cl in schools (hat 
have acknowlc(lf»'('(l or do ackuowlodgc the aiilhoiily of 
the. JTihIio]^ of lioiiic, Ihcy will 1)0 iirijusi and ignorant; 
for (he, Icachiiip^ which existed in oiir own eounlry and 
olher eounlries diiiin.^' the middle a<i;eH — whether it. was 
good or had, eU'eedial or ineilectual — was altogether 
different in its principle, and in ii,H effects, iVom llial, 
whicdi has grown np among the disciples of Ignatius 
Loyola. What, we mean, however confusedly we may 
sometimes utter onr meaning, is tluit the Jesuits 
arc not seeking to frcr the spirit of man hy their 
teaching. We have- a, solid and deep-roolcd convic- 
tion that their ohject is the reverse ol" this ; that 
they look upon the school as one of the instruments, 
probahly the most powerful of all instruments, for pre- 
venting the emancipation of the spirit, lor keeping it 
in fetters. 'IMiat is our ordinary English opinion. I am 
not going to argue in delence of it, though I thoroughly 
and inwardly Ixdieve it to hi*, true; and though that 
persuasion makes it ii (picslion o[ great inditferenc.c to 
nu'. \N helln'r the other statements about the .Jesuits are 
true or not. 1 do not want any black and all Mack 
Eugene Sue portraits of some inconceivable monsters of 
fraud and inicpnty, who at the same time are able, iu 
virtne of their fraud and iniipiitA", to direct all the move- 
ments of the- world. I am glad to get an)' facts, or 
even any tolerable testimonies, to authorize me in dis- 
trusting representations which are in themselves so in- 
crcdihle. I helieve J^inglishmen injure their minds far 
more than Desdemona injured hers, when they listen to 
tales of — 



IV.] VREKDO^r AND OliDKll. Ill 

" Aliilir(i|)((|)li;if.';i, and iiirii avIiomo lioaclfl 
Do [<!•() w ln!iin:illi tlit'ir HliniililiThi ;" 

becaiiRC, ^v\\v\\ il, Ii;ij)|k'iis lliat siicli reports In one. <>i- 
juiotlicr case, arc rcl'ulcd liy 1;Ik^ olaUMiionts ol' iiioi-c 
accuralc. and sccpllcal IravclK'rs, llicrc Is <j,vii(M'ally a 
velicincut reaction, and the bein^^- who was painted as 
a devil may, Avilh luiraeulous rapidlly, e.\elian_!i,-e his 
lioofs for a hah), and obtain an apolhc-osis. I hohl it 
therefore more safe to dismiss those (iaillcan extrava- 
ga^ncies, and to maintain our old faith, that seeing* tlic 
Jesuit does not sock to give om* sons and (Laughters 
freedom, l)ut seeks delil)erately, skilfully, systemati- 
eally, lo (l('j)ri\'i', thcni of IVcedoni, he, is not doin!.:; 
tlie lliing that we want done, he is doing Ihe thing 
w hich most ol" all. we want not to be done ; and 1 here- 
fore that we must rea})eetl'ully re(pu',st him to go his 
way, wdiilc wc go ours. If I added any more words, 
they would be these, that whilevve are pursuing our own 
way steadily and mani'idly, we- have not the least reason 
to be afraid of him, even il" he had those superhuman 
powers which sojue Inlldels and some Protestants at- 
tribute to him ; and th;it if we, miss our way, or walk 
along it with faltering, irregular, lipsy steps, \\c., or any 
man who knows his goal and works straight f)r it, 
must have the advantage of us. 

And it is not oidy when we are o])posing olhers 
ihat we inscribe this watchword of TVeedom on I he- 
same banner with that ol" Kducation. This, as J said 
in my lirst Lecture, has been the safest boast we 
have been able lo put I'orth, on behaH' ol' our publie 
bcIiooIb, 'You nuiy talk,' we have said, 'as you wdl 



112 LEARNING THE MINISTER OF [LECT. 

* of tlieir imperfections as mere places for commmii- 

* eating a certain quantity of information. You maj 
' complain that the sports of the school are its most 
' serious business, that the teaching is secondary to 
' them. But in some way or other^ a free, manly, 
' English character is formed in them ; men do go forth 

* from them who can work with men and for men, who 

* have sympathies with them and tolerance for them, 
' who are therefore fit to rule them.' Whether this boast 
is always well founded or not, whatever deductions 
actual experience may make from it, we at least learn 
from it what our national standard is, what object our 
schools set before themselves, whether they reach it or 
not. And I cannot think that our noblest and most 
effectual school reformer, Dr. Arnold, ever proposed 
to himself a different standard from this, or wished 
that our schools should confess a different object. I 
think he discovered that, through various causes, they 
were not forming Englishmen as they were meant to 
do ; that the games were freer than the teaching ; that 
a lov.^, vulgar caste morality was supplanting the brave 
national morality ; that the schoolmaster had become 
too much identified with the stiff pedant ; and there- 
fore that the schoolboy was sinking into the pert cox- 
comb. He was throughout his life combating the 
slavish tempers and habits which were warping and 
undermining the country's heart. In his own sphere, 
no one combated them so successfully. And since 
all our public schoolmasters who have attempted refor- 
mation, confess that they received their first impulse 
from him, and that like him they are seeking not to 



IT.] FREEDOM AND ORDEE. 113 

change but to restore, we may assume tliat they also 
look upon English education as intended to bring forth 
the free English spirit, and so to counteract the narrow 
and debasing influences, — especially those that grow 
out of our money worship, — which are conspiring to 
destroy it. 

If, then, we are consistent with our own habitual 
professions, we must aim in all our teaching of the 
working classes, at making them free. We know that 
they feel themselves shackled in a thousand ways ; that 
they ask to be delivered from their shackles. They 
may be wrong in some of their notions about the nature 
of their bondage ; they are not wrong about the fact 
of it. If you think that it is upon their souls, and 
not upon their bodies, then you will set about eman- 
cipating their souls. If the distinction between a free- 
man and a slave, as Mrs. Stowe has taught us, and 
many before her, is identical with the distinction be- 
tween a Person and a Thing, you will seek above all 
things to make our working people understand tliaj 
they are Persons, and not Things. Whatever teaching 
contributes to that end must be good for them, and, as- 
they have shown in tiie instance of Music, they will by 
degrees feel that it is good for them. Whatever does 
not contribute to it — but leads them to suppose that 
the things they are working with are more precious 
than themselves, the workers — must be bad for them ; 
and I believe they will not be induced to seek for it, 
or to prize it when it is offered to them. I do not say 
that such teaching, if it comes recommended by men 
in whom they trust, and who promise them that it will 

I 



114 LEAENIXG THE MINISTER OF [LECT. 

"bring political power, 'may not be prized, precisely 
because it appeals to tlieir personal liopes and sym- 
patliies ; but I do say, tliat if we try to give tliem 
instruction wliicli assumes tliem only to be liewers of 
wood and drawers of water, tliey will prefer to liew 
tlieir wood and draw tlieir water — I niiglit add, and to 
drink tlieir gin — without it. 

I do not suppose, liowever, that the only end of 
Education is to make us free. It would not accomplish 
that object if it did not lead us to perceive an order 
in all that we do, and in all we think. Here, again, 
I am only enunciating a proposition to which we have 
all, in some form or other, given an assent. ' School- 
masters,' says George Herbert, in an often quoted pas- 
sage, ' deliver us to Laws.' Their business is not to 
supply a substitute for the paternal government, or for 
the affection of the mother, but to make us understand 
the meaning of ordinances which are fixed for a whole 
society, and cannot be transgressed by any one with- 
out bringing down punishment ; ordinances which are 
to be obeyed, because they exist, but which are gra- 
dually to make their justice and wisdom apparent to 
us. These ordinances are not only imposed that the 
lessons may go on uninterruptedly ; they are the most 
important part of the lesson. They help to make it 
intelligible to the boy how there should be rules of 
grammar and composition ; how it should be his obliga- 
tion not to make false concords. On the other hand, 
the detection of his false concords, and the punishment 
of them, is part of his initiation into the principles of 
order. He finds that there are laws of speech which 



IV.] FEEEDOM AND ORDER. 115 

existed before liis day, before his master's day, to wliicli 
one as mucli as the other must conform himself. This 
is discipline and education imited; it is the teacher's 
business to feel their connexion thoroughly himself, 
that he may, not by formal indoctrination half so much 
as by his habitual practice, imbue his pupils with tlie 
sense of it. By some means or other, the sense of it 
has passed^into the minds of Englishmen, — infinitely 
less than it ought, but still— as I conceive, so much as 
to give us great cause for gratitude. There is always 
danger in vaunting, and when we begin to rejoice that 
our youths are not subject to a Jesuit ecclesiastical drill 
or to a Prussian state drill— that their minds are not 
forced to obey mechanically either a spiritual rule or 
a military word of command,— we should remember with 
trembling, that the perversions of the true idea of order 
and government, which we attribute to people of a 
different faith or nation from our own, are pe;*versions 
incident to human natm'e, and that we have fallen and 
^ do fall into them continually. Still the language indi- 
cates our feeling of what we ought to be ; our true 
school reformers have so considered it. They have not 
thanked God that we are not as other men are, but 
they have thanked Him, for giving us the perception of 
a principle by which we may measure the irregularities 
and inconsistencies of our own practice. They have 
been able to see where despotical caprice in him who 
administers and executes the school law, or favouritism, 
or laxity, or a pedantic adherence to rules, has destroyed 
the moral as well as the intellectual blessing of the 
discipline, and has introduced an order which is not 

I 2 



116 LEARNING THE :^[INISTER OF [leCT. 

the twin sister but the subverter of Freedom, so hin- 
dering the pupils hereafter from understanding how 
God gOA^erns and educates his voluntary creatures, as 
Avell as the laws which He has ordained that Nature, 
with its ever fresh powers of generation and produc- 
tion, should obey. For if, as these reformers have well 
understood, the school is tlic preparation for the higher 
culture of the university — which is to open *o the pupil, 
loosened from that preparatory training in forms and 
accidents, the methods of science, that he may with awe 
and boldness climb the steps which lead him into the 
mysteries of the outward universe, and those other 
steps, not less regular, though apparently broken by 
man's self-will, whereby he may ascend to the secrets 
of the moral world, as they are discovered in human 
and divine history, — to restore that which has become 
weak or confused in the order of the teaching and of 
the discipline, is a duty as great as that of making 
them both minister to freedom, and one which the 
reformer undertakes in the same spirit, and with the 
same deliberate courage. 

It is for the extension of an education, having thi^? 
object as well as the former, to working men, that I 
plead, or, what is much more to the purpose, that they 
themselves plead. You have mistaken them grieA'ously 
if you think that they are more sensible of the first Avant 
than of the second ; that they pant more for freedom 
than for organization. Many phrases which come from 
their lips might lead you to that opinion, but if you com- 
pare them with others quite as significant, quite as much 
expressive of their innermost minds, you would often 



IV.] FREEDOM AND OKDER. 117 

cliange it for tlie opposite. No feeling, I am tliorouglilj 
convinced, is so alive with them, as the wish to find 
an order of which they themselves are a living part, or, 
which is the alternative if that wish is denied them, to 
make one. And if you study carefully their acts as 
well as their words, — if you read, for instance, in an 
impartial spirit, without any bias towards tlie employer 
or the workman, the history of the late Preston strike, — 
you will perceive in them, even at times when the spirit 
of insubordination was likely to be strongest, a sense of 
order and self-restraint, a submission to government and 
a capacity for it, which prove that we may receive 
much from them, as well as impart something to them. 
And this we must learn from that and all similar 
examples, — that the order of society, like the order of 
nature, was not created by us for our convenience, and 
cannot shape itself according to our convenience ; that 
we are all its subjects ; that it asserts itself; that it 
avenges itself; that we are humbly and devoutly to 
ask what its demands upon us are, and whence we can 
obtain the power of fulfilling them. Then when we 
have received a little of this wisdom, which sages in 
their books and the experience of history have tried 
to impress upon us, we may be able to raise our working 
people out of some of the delusions to which they as 
well as we are prone. We may lead them to perceive, 
since we shall have first perceived it ourselves, that 
obedience is not hard and servile compulsion ; that 
polities are not created in conformity to certain theories 
of ours ; that the irregularities and crimes and tyrannies 
of men imply a divine order, of which they are the 



118 LEARNING THE MINISTER OF [LECT, 

transgressions ; tliat every piece of machinery — that the 
commonest acts of those who use machinery — indi- 
cate the divine laws to which the smi and stars do 
homage. We may show them that the instinct which 
led them to listen with wonder and delight to musical 
chords is not a merely sensual one; that it is a witness 
to the trutli of that inward primal harmony in nature 
and in the fellowship of men, which the ancients repre- 
sented in their fables, when they spoke of the music of 
the spheres, and of cities rising at the sound of the 
lyre. 

However strange the assertion may soimd, I helieve 
it is in this way we may best hope to engage our 
working men in the study of the commonest things, as 
well as of severer science. The phrase, teacldng of 
common things, has of late acquired great interest for 
us, through the valuable hints which Lord Ashburton 
has thrown out on the subject, and the practical expe- 
riments by which he lias enforced his hints. Nothing, 
I conceive, can be more true than the''assertion, that we 
have been eager to teach working men, as well as other 
men, uncommon things, while the things which are lying 
at their feet, those which are occupying them every day, 
those whicli affect the economy of their daily lives, are 
disreQ:arded. If we can recal them to those thina'S, 
if we can persuade them to think about those things, 
the moral benefit to them will be greater even than the 
external advantage. For a man seriously to meditate 
how he may prevent the rain from coming through his 
roof, or how lie may convert his dwelling from a sty 
for pigs into a house for his wife and children, is better 



IV,] FREEDOM AND ORDEE. 119 

for him than to have notions and speculations, nay, even 
hond fide knowledge, about the courses of the planets 
and the history of mankind. No proposition, I am 
satisfied, can be sounder than that; and any means 
which arc taken to make it more than a proposition, to 
turn it into use, must be fruitful of good. The good, 
I apprehend, will be especially of this kind. These 
common things have to do with human life, especially 
with domestic life. Instead of withdrawing the man 
from his home, they connect his studies with it. 
Things, — common things, — are instruments of raising 
the man morally, of making him less the slave of his 
circumstances, since he finds that he can mould and dis- 
pose them. The belief that he can substitute order 
for disorder in the arrangements of his household, is an 
immense and unspeakable improvement to his intellect 
and character. It cultivates in him tliat perception of 
order I have been speaking of. I trust, therefore, that 
this experiment may be fully Avorked out, and that no 
apparent disappointment may cause it to be abandoned, 
or check the hopes which it lias excited, especially for 
the agricultural labourers, in many minds. 

Such disappointments, I think, may arise from several 
causes. We all know, from our personal experience, 
that it is not enough to say to us, ' You would be 
' much wiser if you did not trouble yourself about great 
' matters which do not concern you ; about events in 
' the Baltic and Black Sea ; about Russian aggression 
' or Austrian diplomacy. Have not you business enough 
' to do in your own village, in your own house ? Why 
' should you be sending your thoughts to the ends of 



120 LEARNING THE MINISTER OF [lECT. 

' tlie earth, when you might concentrate them there?' 
Such words, I am sure, make many of us very much 
ashamed Avhen we hear them. They touch our con- 
sciences. We have many accounts unsettled in our own 
circles ; we cannot pretend any special call to Cronstadt 
or Sebastopol ; we are not likely to sway the counsels 
of Vienna or Petersburgh. Nevertheless, there lies the 
newspaper on the table ; under protest, we turn to it 
again. The subject has an indescribable interest for us. 
When we come to question ourselves, we cannot find 
out that our other work would be better done, if ^YQ 
stifled that instinct. It might be immeasurably better 
done if that instinct took a stronger and healthier form. 
If, instead of yawning over the latest intelligence or the 
leading article, we seriously felt for tlie human beings 
and the human interests that are involved in those 
distant transactions, the human interests and human 
beings that are nearer to us might rise also in our esti- 
mation ; we might feel more our duties to them, more 
the power we have of benefiting them. 

It seems to me that, in like manner, working men, 
who are living with each other in shops, factories, public 
houses, who hear and talk, who read newspapers, may 
listen to our call that they should mind the common things 
of their household, and may in part admit the reason- 
ableness of it, but that they will in a majority of cases 
still find the distant and comprehensive subjects more 
engaging. When that is not the case, it will be because 
they have already acquired a sense of moral respon- 
sibility w^hich leads them to feel most strongly the ob- 
ligations that are closest to them. I dare not say 



IV.] FEEEDOM AND ORDER. 121 

that the man who has this sense of responsibilitj will 
he the one who gives up his patriotism, who ceases to 
care for that which affects his country. I dare not wish 
to deprive him of any one interest that is even half 
awake in him already. I should rather wish to arouse it 
into full consciousness, and this for the sake of the 
other object. The paradoxical proverb is a true one, 
that the longest way yound is the shortest way home. 
The labourer may arrive at his home through Cronstadt 
and Sebastopol, whilst the quicker route might have 
brought him, not to his family, but only to his chimney 
corner ; not to think of common things, but only of 
those which are purely and exclusively his own. 

The great problem of all, then, is how to make men 
know that they are persons, and therefore that freedom 
and order are tlieir necessary and rightful inheritance. 
There may be various ways of solving this problem. 
One of them may be, by teaching household economy ; 
one of them may be, by teaching what many call an 
accomplishment, a refinement. I do not care what 
influence you bring to bear upon the man, provided it 
does its work, — provided it arouses him to be a man. 
Common things or uncommon, fine arts or coarse arts, 
which promote that object, are all precious. To reject 
one or another upon a theory is rash. We cannot in the 
least pronounce a priori which will meet particular cases 
or emergencies best. The success of Mr. Hullah's classes 
proves, as I have shown already, how much all previous 
conjecture, however practical, however apparently built 
on observation, may mislead us. I know but three rules 
which we can follow in forming a scheme of education. 



122 LEAllNING THE MINISTER OF [LECT. 

The first, is to "be clear about our objects. The second, 
is to study the tempers of those whom we would guide. 
The third, is to plagiarise without remorse from all our 
predecessors. 

I am about to confess my own plagiarisms from two 
parties which are supposed to be in deadly hostility to 
each other, and both of which have some excuse for 
anathematising me. In maintaining that any study 
whatsoever, music, arithmetic, or that of common things, 
is an instrument of which we may make use, even ifioe 
have no other, in educating working men, or indeed men 
of any class, I have adopted the maxim of those who call 
themselves supporters of a purely Secular Education. 
They ask why we are not at liberty to teach what we 
can, supposing it is not in our power to teach what we 
would? — whether it is not a strange thing to prefer no 
instruction, to a scheme from which religious instruction 
is excluded ? — whether we really think a man the worse 
for having got wisdom on some subjects, because he has 
not got it on that which we deem most important? 
— whether we believe that enlightenment on the ordi- 
nary business of life is a disqualification for the higher 
lessons we would communicate ? — whether, if that is the 
case, there is not good reason to suspect that these 
lessons are not what they ought to be, not what are 
likely to make free and brave English citizens ? These, 
I think, are perfectly reasonable questions, all the better 
because they are searching. I have answered the main 
one already. I am equally ready to answer those wdiicli 
are subordinate to it. I own at once that I should be 
afraid that I was deceiving myself about the quality of 



I v.] FREEDOM AND OKDEE. 123 

any religious instruction I ventured to offer, to any 
person whatever, if I thouglit ignorance, dulness, torpor 
of the mental faculties, would be a helpful precondition 
to his receiving it ; if I did not Avish that he should be 
as wide awake as he could be ; if I did not hail any 
agency that had stirred up his faculties, even though the 
immediate effect of the stirring might be to make him 
regard me and that which I have to tell him, with irri- 
tation, Avith suspicion, with aversion. I speak these 
words deliberately, understanding something of what 
is involved in them, and not shrinking from any appli- 
cation of them that I am as yet acquainted with. And 
therefore, if this were all that the advocates of secular 
instruction intended by their doctrine, I might ask for 
admission into their guild. But I have already made 
statements which prevent me from pretending to that 
honour. I have spoken of men as spiritual beings. I 
have only justified the musical education on the ground 
that it arouses men, shut up in the dreariest mechanical 
employments, even sunk in moral debasement, to a feeling 
of their spiritual existence, to the consciousness of be- 
longing to another economy than that which is conversant 
with the making or selling of commodities. I have 
supposed freedom and order to be impossible for men 
except as they come to understand that there is this 
higher economy for them ; that they are not enclosed 
within the boundaries of the lower. With the Secu- 
larists, so far as they deny this principle, 1 am at issue, 
not about points and deductions, but about data ; about 
the very end for wdiich Learning exists, and for the sake 
of which it is to be associated with Working. I can see 



124 LEARNING THE MINISTER OF [lECT. 

no outcome from this project when it takes tliis form, but 
that which Mr. Dickens is so vividly setting before us 
in his sketches of the family of Mr. Gradgrind, a gen- 
tleman who announces himself as the great champion of 
■ facts,' but who, if I understand his biographer rightly, 
is only the champion of one class of facts, the positive 
and dogmatical denier of another equally ascertained 
class, which have even more to do with our condition as 
human beings. 

In treating men as spiritual creatures, I am evi- 
dently plagiarising from the schoolof the anti-Secularists, 
— from those who say that religion is the basis of 
education. If I could understand that proposition to 
be a recognition of the principle which I believe is 
embodied in the old education of England, — if I 
could understand by it the proclamation of the further 
truth, that we are instruments in the hands of God for 
raising and educating the spirits of men, and that we 
ought all to confess this responsibility — I might hope to 
fraternise with this class. But it seems to me that too 
many of them, in their zeal against Secularists, actually 
assume their ground and relinquish their own ; that they 
treat the subjects of their discipline as purely mechanical, 
while they affirm them to be spiritual ; that they address 
them as if they belonged only to a mundane economy, 
while all their professions imply the existence of another ; 
that they undermine the faith in a divine Teacher, even 
in the very words which they use to maintain the neces- 
sity of a divine Teaching. I differ with them, because 
they seem to me to differ with themselves. I only ask 
them and the Secularists to hold fast to the doctrines 



lY.] FREEDOM AND OEDER. 125 

from wliicli they start, and to dismiss what is incon- 
sistent with them ; then I think they will, in due time, 
miderstand one another, and may together provide a 
solid education for the people of England. 

Whilst, however, I have made frank acknowledgment 
of my thefts from these two opposing schools, I must 
disclaim all intention of fashioning out of these thefts 
an eclectical scheme of education which shall be half 
secular, half religious. Against this kind of com- 
pound I would most earnestly protest. I believe it 
must be powerless for good to any class, but utterly and 
demonstrably powerless for the working classes. There 
is a kind of Christianised teaching about philology, his- 
tory, physiology, which seems to me most unchristian. 
It is offensive to the scientific man, because it twists 
facts to a moral ; to the devout man, because it treats 
the laws of God's universe and His acts as less sacred 
than our inferences from them ; to the working man, 
because he asks us to help him to see the truth of 
things, and he thinks we are plotting to deceive him. 
If you regard Christianity as something which is to be 
spread and sprinkled over the surface of things, to pre- 
vent truth from being dangerous — if you have not courage 
to look into the roots of knowledge and science, be- 
cause you are sm'e that the God of truth and righteous- 
ness is there, — you had better leave the working man 
alone, unless you desire to make him a thousand times 
more of an infidel than you give him credit for being 
already. 

I apprehend that if we are to give the working men 
an education, we must take them as we find them, not 



126 LEARNING THE MINISTER OF [lECT. 

as we would liave tliem to "be, in order to make our 
arrangements for them easier. But that is the condition 
under which all education, — that of the upper classes as 
well as of the lower, — that already existing in England 
as well as that which may be called into existence, — 
must henceforth proceed. The decision to which the 
House of Commons came last week, on Mr. Hey wood's 
clause for the removal of the tests at matriculation in 
Oxford, marks a new era in the history of the Univer- 
sities. The resolution may not he affirmed by the 
House of Lords ; it may not at once be carried into 
execution ; but there can be no doubt, I conceive, in 
any reasonable mind, that the rulers of the University 
must consider the principle as established, and must 
prepare themselves to act upon it. They must them- 
selves be submitted now to a new and very stringent 
test. It is to be tried whether they can address them- 
selves to the various sects of the nation, and, without 
exacting from them any preparatory agreement, can 
prove to them and to all that they are fit to be educators 
of a nation, the witnesses to it of the freedom and 
order which are intended for all its sons. I trust 
and hope that these ancient bodies will answer this 
call, as those who love them could wish them to answer 
it. I trust they will show that the senility which has 
been imputed to them, has been apparent only ; or that, 
if there was any ground for the charge, it will dis- 
appear, now that tliey know how much the country 
demands of them. Which result I believe we may help 
to bring about, if we show that the maxims upon which 
they must conduct their education are precisely those 



lY.] FREEDOM AND OKDEll. 127 

wliicli we find applicable, and are ready to apply, in tlic 
case of men not within the circle of their influence. 

On the whole, I think the reasons for discouragement 
which I brought before you in my last Lecture are fully 
balanced by the signs of hope which I have tried to 
speak of to-day. They may not be as brilliant as we 
should like them to be ; they may be mixed with much 
out of wliich we could, if we liked, draw excuses for 
despondency. But if we have that faith in the power of 
good, and the strength that is given to weakness, with- 
out Avliich any attempt to ^meet a great necessity must 
fail, I am sure that we shall see in every thought which 
every benevolent man has thrown out — in the triumph of 
at least one educational movement, and the feelings with 
which the people have welcomed it — in the ideas and 
attempts of the most warring parties — pledges of hope, 
that it would be sinful to reject or despise. I know 
there are some who cannot discover any such symptoms 
of good in the new palace of Art which has been opened 
to the inhabitants of this city. 1 agree with them that 
the salvation of a country is not to be looked for from 
such exhibitions. If I thought it was only to offer 
nourishment for our dilettantism, I should be disposed 
to use stronger language, and to repeat, in reference to 
the nineteenth century, what I ventured to say to you 
respecting Lorenzo's garden in the fifteenth. But this 
danger will be averted, if you use that which might be 
merely a place for gazing, as a place of education ; if 
you do not contemplate the works of former days as 
objects of idolatry, but as indicating what men in dif- 
ferent ages, who were of our flesh and blood, thought, 



128 LEARNINa THE MINISTER, ETC. [lECT. 

and in what forms they expressed their thought ; if yon 
connect them with thoughts and struggles that are in 
your own minds, and in the minds of the least in- 
structed of your countrymen. You may make the 
works at Sydenham, lesson books for them in the his- 
tory of the past. Out of those lesson books you may 
lead them to reflect : ' We too are men ; we too have 
' spirits within us. We need some higher Teacher 
' than these, to giye our spirits freedom ; to bring our 
' strange thoughts into order ; to make us workers and 
' learners for our children and for the time to come.' 



^1 



Y.] THE STUDIES IN A WOEKING COLLEGE. 129 



LECTURE V. 

THE STUDIES IN A WOEKING COLLEGE. 

I SAID in my last Lecture that tlie ends wliicli we 
should propose to ourselves in the Education of working 
men, and of all men, were to give them Freedom and 
Order. Of course^ I know how little worth there is in 
either of these words, so long as it is a mere word. 
Freedom and Order have become, may continue to be — 
symbols for stump orators and election placards. Either 
symbol may stand as a representative of most mischievous 
and hateful acts and principles. We all remember what 
Madame Koland said about the first as she went to 
execution; surely there are hundreds lying in Italian 
prisons who could utter a still deeper groan about the 
crimes that have been perpetrated in the other name. 
To speak of them in connexion with Education, I assume 
that they can be redeemed from the service of the plat- 
form and the hustings ; that they can find a living, intel- 
ligible, practical signification ; that they can be wrenched 
out of the hands of the anarchist and the despot, 
(perhaps it is a blunder to distinguish names which are 
always found at last to denote the same thing,) and can 

K 



130 THE STUDIES IN A WOEKING COLLEGE. [LECT. 

Ibe turned against tliem. If we have tliat jDurpose in 
view, tlie more liabitnally we remember it, the more 
plainly we avow it, the better it will be for ns and for 
those whom we teach. I say for myself, that I do not 
care for Education in the least except so far as I believe 
it will contribute to these results. 

I tried to show you that our Grammar-schools and 
Universities nominally aim at these objects, much more 
than at communicating any greater or less amomit of 
teaching ; that this is the justification we commonly put 
forth for them ; that all true and effectual reformers 
have laboured to bring them back to this standard, to 
make them real instruments in emancipating the spirits- 
of the students, and in giving them a sense of Order. We 
have stated the case to ourselves thus : — ' These boys 

* will hereafter have to toil in some profession or other, as 
' statesmen, as soldiers, as sailors, as landlords, as culti- 

* vators of the land^ as lawyers, as physicians, as divines. 
' God forbid that they should not toil ! God forbid 
' that they should become idlers in the land ! But they 
' may become drudges instead of workers. They will, 

* unless they are men as well as workers. Then their 
' work will be free, brave, intelligent. The practice of 
^ their professions will be honourable, the science of 

* them will be expanded. If they are swallowed up in 

* their work, — if they think of themselves only as land- 

* lords, as soldiers, as sailors, as physicians, — the pro- 

* fession will sink into a craft ; its mercenary ends will 

* be chiefly regarded. It will lose its old dignity, it 

* will conquer no new regions of thought and expe- 

* xience. Therefore, for the sake of Work, let us have 



v.] THE STUDIES IX A WORKING COLLEGE. 131 

' an education which has not merely a reference to 
' Work.' 

We have "been so vehement in these assertions, that 
we have even exaggerated the application of them, and 
so have weakened their effect. We have so much 
dreaded to make the Education of our Schools and Uni- 
versities professional, that we have kept it at a wide, 
almost hopeless, distance from professional life. So 
those effects have followed which I spoke of in my first 
Lecture. The higher adult Education, that which our 
ancestors described by the word Faculties, that from 
which our Universities started, and which is their proper 
characteristic, has been buried under the mere school 
education. The teaching of boys has given the tone and 
form to the discipline which should direct the thoughts 
of men, when they are about to plunge into the business 
of the world. Hence that business has become, unhap- 
pily, divorced from the previous study. It is in danger 
of becoming a mere absorbing practice. The springs 
which should have fed it have been choked up or 
diverted elsewhere. I rejoice to think that we have 
suffered less from these causes than we might reason- 
ably have expected. There is, I am sure, among the 
professional men of England a manliness and nobleness 
that are scarcely to be found anywhere. Every one of 
us must have had proofs in his intercourse with phy- 
sicians of their freedom from sordid feelings — proofs to 
be recollected with silent gratitude and humiliation. 
Those who have conversed much with lawyers, will 
readily acknowledge that the generous and high-minded 
judge, who was as dear to the scholar as to the lawyer, 

K 2 



132 THE STUDIES IN A WORKINa COLLEGE. [LECT. 

and wliose dying words entitle liim to the love of the 
working-people as mucli as of either, was not an excep- 
tion in his order, but a specimen of what it may produce. 
And yet I gather from the lamentations I have heard 
among the members of these noble professions, how 
much they fear lest the science of medicine or of law, 
being separated from other sciences, and from the studies 
which belong to humanity, should be crushed under the 
details of business, lest their own lives should yield 
to the same oppression. I have no doubt that some of 
these evils are counteracted by that which they often 
find very inconvenient, the grumbling of patients and 
suitors, whose demands, often ignorant no doubt, but 
expressing real wants, force them to reflect upon their 
traditional habits and rules in connexion with the general 
interests of mankind, and with the principles of their 
science, from which any reformation that is not hasty 
and mischievous must begin. Still greater benefits may 
arise to these professions — and to another that is 
liable to more flagrant abuses and perversions from the 
idols of the cave and of the market place — if the Uni- 
versities, stimulated by the Legislature, make a serious 
eftbrt to revive their adult lore, so carrying into efl'ect 
their own true faith that all particular branches 
of knowledge should be subject to a comprehensive 
human culture. But the greatest good of all to Law, 
Physic, and Divinity, may be expected, as I think, if 
lawyers, physicians, and divines, determine in their 
hearts that the hand workers shall not be mere drudges 
more than themselves, that they also shall be taught 
how to work as men, that they shall have such Freedom 



v.] THE STUDIES IN A WOKKING COLLEGE. 133 

and sucli an Order as no arrangements of society, with- 
out a spirit to direct them and the men who compose 
the society, can ever give. 

When we had settled these to be ends of our teaching, 
we were less scandalised and discouraged than we should 
otherwise have been, by some discoveries which were 
made to us respecting the tastes and inclinations of the 
working people themselves. It was a curious, and at 
first a very startling fact, that they apparently pre- 
ferred musical instruction to any other we could afford 
them. Almost any lessons would have seemed more 
practical, more suitable to their appointed tasks, than 
these. With the little time they have for acquiring 
information, how strange, how perplexing, that they 
should fix their aff'ections upon a pursuit which, after 
considerable labour, could return them so little. But 
possibly their instinct is sounder than our criticism. 
They may have discovered the very truth which we 
have nearly forgotten ; their welcoming of music may 
be a sign that they want something deeper and better 
than all mere indoctrination. The fact, it seemed to 
me, ought not to be overlooked. I was as much dis- 
posed to complain of it as any one could be : but it is 
of no use to complain of facts ; we must adjust ourselves 
to them as we can. If we do not adjust ourselves to 
them, I believe our Education will not be worth having. 

It would indeed be a very hasty inference from tliis 
observation, that music is the only study or the chief 
study which we are to offer our people facilities for 
learning. I have already told you that not a few of 
them, under every possible disadvantage, have devoted 



134 THE STUDIES IN A WORKING COLLEGE. [LECT. 

tliemselves to Mathematics, and that the works they 
were engaged in have given them an interest in the 
study which they would not otherwise have had. Cases 
of tlieir giving themselves to languages may he rarer, 
but unquestionably they are to be found. The authoress 
of ' Mary Barton,' the most satisfactory of all wit- 
nesses, testifies to the existence of learned botanists and 
entomologists among the Manchester spinners. How 
many of those who have devised our greatest engineering- 
wonders have begun in the workshop, I believe we are 
scarcely aware. The profoundest scientific chemists have 
been sei^vants in the laboratory. I believe the statistics 
of the most popular lecture rooms which the working 
people frequent, would show that history and poetry 
are subjects on which they especially like to hear dis- 
courses. I need not speak of the impulse to oratory, 
which exists certainly as much in them as in any 
class of the community. And no one can have listened 
to any of their speeches, without seeing how many 
ethical and metaphysical as well as political theories are 
seething in their brains. What, therefore, I gather 
from the willingness they have shown to receive musical 
instruction, is (1.) That all other instruction should 
speak to them as this does, less as distinguished by 
particular occupations, than as sharers of a common 
humanity, and as capable of entering into the feeling of 
it, in spite of their different pursuits, or by means of 
them. (2.) That it being regarded as the great end of 
studies to raise and cultivate that which is human, the 
arbitrary division of them into useful and entertaining 
should be discarded as illogical and embarrassing. 



y.] THE STUDIES IN A WORKINa COLLEGE. 135 

•(3.) That they should have a considerable number of 
studies presented to them, out of which they may choose 
the one or two which have most attractions for them. 
(4.) That though they never should be invited to devote 
more time to any studies than is compatible with their 
ordinary occupations, they should be led to perceive that 
there is a relation between all studies ; that the boundary 
lines between them are often artificial and imaginary; 
that when they are most real, and when it is most 
needful to distinguish between their objects and their 
spheres, they again blend together when they are con- 
templated in reference to our lives and duties. 

I could not even venture to speak of a course of 
studies for a College of Working Men, without making 
these preliminary remarks. For you will be ready to 
exclaim — ' Course of studies ! what a wild dream is 

* this ! Here are ignorant, untrained men, with an hour 
' or two which they can with great difficulty snatch out 

* of a day of extreme toil, and you fancy that you can 

* give them a regular systematic indoctrination in a 

* dozen or fifteen subjects, to understand any one of 

* which would require all the wits of ordinary people of 

* our class, who have had a preparatory discipline of 

* many years.' I am guilty of no such monstrous 
extravagances. I am going to speak of various branches 
of knowledge, between which I feel there is a close 
inward connexion. I wish the working man to under- 
stand that there is this connexion. But I would have 
him understand it, not by plunging into all these studies 
together, or even into one after another, but by learning 
under a teacher who feels the connexion himself; whd 



136 THE STUDIES IN A WORKING COLLEGE. [LECT. 

is in friendly and continual intercourse witli other 
teachers, each trying to initiate his pupils into the 
subject with which he is most familiar. I allow for the 
short time, the very short time, which the working man 
is able to give to any subject. I do not anticipate the 
day, which, nevertheless, I trust our children will see, if 
we do not, when Mr. Wilson's principle will be carried 
out to its full extent, when the Factory shall become the 
College, when Working and Learning shall be regarded 
as inseparable. I take things as I find them. The hard 
won evening hours are all I ask for. I do not wish the 
married man — I do not expect the bachelor — to give up 
half or a third of these to the college. What I think 
he may do, if there is a subject which has already some 
hold upon him, or which he wishes for any reason to 
take hold of, is to come for the hour or hour and a half, 
when that subject is taught, week after week. He can, 
if he likes and if he lives, spread his lessons over a 
much wider tract of years than the ordinary student in 
a University ; since he is not preparing for work, but in 
the midst of work. The Degree need not terminate his 
career, as it does that of the other ; he may, therefore, 
make some amends for a little time at first, by the 
greater time afterwards. But he may make much 
better amends than this, if he is really awake and 
interested in that which he is about. He may speak of 
it at home with his wife and children ; he may think of 
it, and even, as the mathematical students I alluded to 
are in the habit of doing, read about it, when his work 
is merely mechanical. And then when he feels that his 
mind is freer and more orderly for this part of learning, 



v.] THE STUDIES IN A WOEKINa COLLEGE. 137 

and if he has seen something on the right or left of it 
which is needed to bring out the full sense of it, he maj 
"betake himself to that, or he may work with dogged 
pertinacity in his own original mine, till he has 
brought out some of its deeper and more hidden 
treasures. I have said thus much about the teachers, 
and the way in which I would have them think and 
work together, each keeping his own calling directly be- 
fore him, each growing into a respect for his neighbour's 
calling and curing himself of his exclusiveness, because 
I could not well separate it from the topic which is 
before us now. But I reserve for my final Lecture the 
consideration of the class from which the teaching body 
should be taken, of the form which should be given to 
it, of the relation in which it should stand to the 
learners. My business now is to enumerate the subjects 
which I suppose we are warranted in offering to a 
body of working men, as being likely on one ground or 
another to engage their sympathies, and as fitted to 
elevate them individually and socially. 

The first I shall speak of. is one which you might 
fancy I should keep to the last, as being very difiicult and 
dangerous to handle, if 1 were not prudent enough to omit 
it altogether. There can be no doubt that the subject of 
Politics has an interest for a large body of English work- 
men which no other subject has. That is the reason 
why it is banished from many institutions which seek to 
do them good. ' We do not want,' it is said, * questions 
'which set men at war. Education is designed to 

* make the mind calm and sober. Confine yourselves 

* to physics ; there is no excitement and passion. Once 



138 THE STUDIES IN A WORKING COLLEGE. [LECT. 

* venture on the other ground, and you are in the midst 
^ of smoke ; a smoke which betokens that tliere is fire if 

* it has not yet bm-st out/ 

There are some who feel the force of this remark, 
and yet who half suspect that you do not clear away 
the smoke or put out the fire, by pretending not to 
observe them. They think political instruction should 
be given, but under another name. ' Why may we not 

* teach what is needful to be known of Politics in the 
^ form of History ? We do in fact communicate much 
' political information to school-boys when we read Livy 

* or Tacitus with them. Working men who are likely 

* to frequent a college will learn what they want or can 
' receive respecting the present from the newsj)aper ; our 

* business is to give them tidings respecting the past, of 

* which they have as yet only a very loose and incorrect 

* impression.'' I feel all the temptations to adopt this 
mode of escaping from the difficulty. I know what 
plausible and strong arguments there are for avoiding a 
name, which often alarms quiet people more than the 
most terrible things. But I am satisfied that these 
risks ought to be incurred, and that an Education such 
as I am proposing for men, will fail altogether of its 
object, if it does not teach Politics ; if it does not give 
great prominence to them; if it attempts to disguise 
the purpose by any subterfuge whatever. Unquestion- 
ably I wish the working men to feel tliat they are 
studying Politics when they are studying History; 
I wish them to think of the past and to learn the lessons 
of the past. I rejoice to believe that our English boys 
are learning politics, and not merely Latin and Greek, 



y.] THE STUDIES IN A WOEKIXG COLLEGE. 139 

from Tacitus and Thucydides ; tlie j will learn still more 
of politics, I suspect, from the Bible, if tlie j read it with, 
open eyes. But I have to remark, once for all, that we 
never can teach men as we teach boys, let their previous 
deficiencies be what they may. You will all remember 
the passage in Guy Mannering, where Dominie Sampson, 
in his first rapture at receiving 3Ir. Henry Bertram, the 
pupil who had been lost at five years old and had come 
back at twenty-two, tells him how much his sister has 
been learning in the interval, and proposes to begin 
again with him from the fii'st rudiments of grammar, 
!Xow there was nothing ridiculous in this proposition 
according to school notions. There was a reasonable 
presumption that Mr. Bertram, who had been roughing 
it in the world, was rather rusty in his accidence, if he 
had been lucky enough to have meddled with it at 
all, after he fell among the smugglers. Since sound 
knowledge requires a sound foundation, the Dominie 
had a fair excuse for suggesting that he should resume 
his studies where he had left them ofi". Why then did 
the clear worldly sense of Sir Walter Scott perceive 
something exquisitely humorous in this scheme of the 
tutor? why has he made his readers laugh at it more 
even than at his exorcism of Meg Merrilies ? Because 
we feel instinctively that a man has rights, has a know- 
ledge, has a position, which must be taken for granted, 
and respected ; that he must under no circumstances 
be put on a first foiTQ, and turned into a child. You 
cannot do it ; you have no business to attempt it. 
The world has been teaching him — I must add with all 
reverence, God has been teaching him — whatever you 



110 TllK STUDIES IN A WOrvKINCI COLLECIE. [LKCT. 

Ikivc Ibccu cloliii;-. ^Po overlook that fact, is sliii})lv to 
deprive yourself of tlie Lest opportunity of clcliveriiig 
Lim from the iciuorancc whieh cleaves to him. 

I am not at all sure that we have not heen too 
indlll'erent to the present, in our teaehing of boys ; 
that ^ve have not far too much ignored the amount of 
incoherent ini'ormation which they have received from 
conversation and newspapers, and have not failed to 
connect that witli tlie work of the schoolroom. 1 iind 
the most intelligent schoolmasters are heglnning to 
adopt that opinion, and to alter their practice in con- 
formlly Avith It. And L think that hy doing so, they 
will help to hring about one of the most desirable 
and necessary of all reforms. 

It has become the fashion even at our public schools 
to give the pupils extracts from great authors, for the 
sake of the language, rather than the authors themselves. 
St) they are driven to learn what is called their lllslory 
from outlines and epitomes. The moment we begin \o 
regard History as the interpretation of the present by 
the ])ast, these nmst prove utterly unavailing; LIvy 
and Xeno})hon must resume their ])lacc as teachers ; 
Mr. rinnoek's Catechisms may be used to light our 
fires, since they have no light in themselves. 

I think, then, that instead of binding ourselves by 
precedents drawn from the teaching of ehiklren, we may 
rather hope greatly to benefit that teaehing by following 
out the method whieh is obviously the most suitable for 
men. To make our working people aware of the 
treasures which they ])Ossess in the history of the 
country, 1 would begin with the topics that are most 



v.] THE STUDIES IN A WORKING COLLEGE. 141 

occupying us iu llils day. No doiiLt these are ])arty 
topics, — that is to say, cacli party in the country has its 
own views upon them. You may make that an excuse 
for passing them by, and for talking upon some subject 
upon wliicli all people agree, or seem to agree. You 
may say, ' There is a Tory tradition about this point, and 

* a Whig tradition. I find these working peo})le rather 

* impatient of both, inclined to take up with some Radical 

* o])inion which they fancy is not traditlonid. It is much 

* "better to move the previous question, and discourse of 

* air-pumps and gases.' What is the effect V The most 
active and energetic thoughts of the minds with which 
you have to deal, are those which you do not meet, 
which you leave to the sport of any chance influence. 
Y^ou say to the most vigorous man, — ' Your vigour is in 

* our way ; we had rather you Avcrc stupid or asleep ; 
' and Ave wdll try to find some part of you which is not 

* alive, that w^e may address ourselves to that.' It 
woidd be better to take any course, even what I should 
think the narrowest, than this. Give them your Tory 
traditions or your Whig traditions ; enforce them by 
the most passionate declamation, by the most onesided 
exhibition of facts, luring up your fierce Radicalism to 
confound both. Tn any of these ways you will do 
something ; you will often irritate the man's fiiith, you 
will often outrage his conscience ; perhaps you will 
find that you are not dealing very fairly with your 
own ; but at least you will kindle some emotions, w^ith 
whieh good will mix as ^v(^\ as evil. You will not 
leave the man to the thought wdiich is the worst of all f >r 
him and for you, that there is nothing common between 



142 THE STUDIES IN A WORKING COLLEGE. [LECT. 

liim and you ; that yon do not care for the same things, 
that yon are indifferent whether yon are fellow-citizens > 
or deadly foes. 

I believe, indeed, that there is a more excellent way 
than either — one which those who care to edncate work- 
ing men and to edncate thinking men, more than to 
propagate their opinions, will find. I believe that they 
will be able to point ont the great and precions prin- 
ciples which have been vindicated by the Tory tra- 
ditions and by the Whig traditions; the grievons loss 
which it would have been if either had been wanting to 
the land; the great and noble spirit which has gone 
forth in support of both. I believe that in justifying 
these, and in showing how, while apparently counter- 
acting each other, they have nobly worked together for 
building up the nation, yon would be able to point out 
far more clearly what have been the sins into which 
each party has fallen, and what reason each has afforded 
for the bitter complaints against it. You would then be 
able to explain, while confessing the good of both, 
while proving that good to be necessary for our time as 
well as for any past time, that there is a good which 
neither could effect, nor both together, and which we 
may effect if we profit by the wisdom of both, while we 
refuse to be bound by the exclnsiveness of either. Thus 
a teacher may give the most cordial welcome to the 
convictions and hopes which he will find stirring in the 
hearts of the working men, and yet may bring the 
experience of history to remove their prejudices and 
diminish their asperities. This cannot be, if we do not 
come to the task with a willingness to have our own 



v.] THE STUDIES IN A WORKING COLLEGE. 143 

theories broken to pieces by facts ; desirous to nnd 
men, better than we have supposed them to be ; de- 
termined that what is right and true must be mightier 
and must show itself to be mightier than we and all 
other men are. This willingness, this determination, 
may grow weaker or firmer by practice. Nothing is so 
likely to weaken them as the habit of attacking others 
and apologising for ourselves. Nothing is so likely to 
strengthen them as the habit of bringing our thoughts 
into collision with those of men whom we wish to help, 
who will not take what we say for granted, who' will 
often surprise us by their ignorance, often by showing 
us that they have got beyond our depth. 

You may ask how I would begin with defining the 
subject which I propose should have such prominence ; 
into how many portions I would divide it. I answer, 
I think if we begin with the topics to which we ordi- 
narily give the name Political, — those topics that are 
most occupying our thoughts, foreign, domestic, econo- 
mical, legal, — we shall arrive by degrees at the sense of 
the word ; at the very sense of it which is indicated by 
its etymology ; at the very sense which the greatest 
thinkers have seen in it, far more securely and satis- 
factorily than if we started with a formal definition, 
which would embarrass the student and separate the 
subject from his actual interests and sympathies. By 
the same method we shall get to perceive when Politics 
are dealing with human beings ; when with the things 
which they work with or traffic with ; when they are con- 
versant about decrees ; when with laws ; when they are 
occupied with what is mutable, when with that which is 



144 THE STUDIES IN A WOEKING COLLEGE. [lECT. . 

fixed and eternal, — far "better than if we introduced 
divisions at the outset which are likely to tie it down by 
maxims of ours, sometimes confounding what should be 
distinguished, sometimes separating what should be 
united. By this experimental course, we do justice to 
the isrnorance and the knowledge both of ourselves and 
our pupils, and we may make a particular study the 
means of illustrating and cultivating the method which 
belongs to all studies. 

That is one excuse for the disproportionate length at 
which I have spoken of this subject. Another is, that 
I have included in it much that I have to say on some 
other subjects which would else require a careful treat- 
ment. I shall not need to explain how I suppose the 
History of England, or of any other country in the 
modern or old world, ought to be presented to a body of 
workers ; I have already shown that I look upon them 
all as deriving their interest and significance from the 
light which they throw upon our own noisy age, from 
the power which they give of looking into the heart of 
questions which we are all inclined to contemplate 
chiefly from the outside. And do not suppose that I am 
showing our forefathers any disrespect, or am forgetting 
that they had a life and battle of their own, because I 
claim them first of all as commentators upon us. On 
the contrary, I am sure they will come forth as living 
figures out of the canvass — they will put on flesh and 
blood again, and be seen, not merely in the costume of 
their own time, but surrounded with all its circumstances 
and interests, the actors in a true human drama, when 
we connect them with what we see and do and feel. 



v.] THE STUDIES IN A WORKING COLLEGE. 145 

Dr. Arnold, in an admirable passage of liis Lectures, 
dwells upon the good which he had got from Mitford's 
* Greece,' not because the sentiments of the historian 
were just, or his statements of facts always credible, 
but because he wrote in a passion, because he denounced 
Pericles with the same vehemence with which he would 
have denounced Mr. Fox. So Dr. Arnold learnt that 
Pericles was not less an actual person, not more a 
shadow, than Mr. Fox. He could judge afterwards for 
himself what place he occupied among men, whether 
it was that which Mitford had assigned him or quite 
a different one ; but hereafter a place he must have, not 
in a mausoleum, but among thinkers and workers. 
One ought to be thankful for the existence of the 
historical partisan, if he only produces one such actual 
believer in history as Arnold was. But the experience, 
I suspect, is not an uncommon one. We have all had 
to bless some one or other for making ns know that 
we are reading of men and women when we are reading 
bound books. I think it is also Dr. Arnold who says 
that he owed much to the ' Fortunes of Nigel ' for 
making him recollect that King James talked broad 
Scotch. That is the kind of benefit which we have 
most of us derived from Sir Walter Scott. If we canno'^ 
always assure ourselves that his kings and queens, even 
that his ordinary ladies and gentlemen, had hearts- 
beneath their robes, we have at least had one great 
difficulty removed. They did walk and talk ; they had 
shoes and head-gear; they are not only to be found 
on coins. When we have got them so far brought 
into the region of humanity, Shakspeare will show 

L 



146 THE STUDIES IN A WOIlKINa COLLEGE. [LECT. 

US wliat tliej were, as well as what tliey wore; w^e 
begin to recognise witli awe and almost trembling that 
nothing has departed or can depart; that words once 
spoken, thoughts once thought, have a permanence 
which man did not give them, and cannot take away 
from them. 

To receive this impression even imperfectly, is to 
learn history, — to convey it, is to teach history. English- 
men can, I think, learn it and teach it in no other way ; 
no men are more likely both to learn it and teach it 
again to us in that way, than our working people. It is 
one of the great blessings I expect from a free inter- 
com'se with them, that we shall be compelled to study 
all that we might look at as antiquarians or dilettanti, 
heartily and humanly. No men have appreciated 
more, none perhaps so much, the services which Mr. 
Carlyle has rendered to history and biography, by 
giving substance and personality to names that had been 
mere watchwords of vague admiration or horror. With- 
out his genius, we may, if avc have battles to fight our- 
selves, understand a little how other men fought theirs ; 
and the tougher and harder the fight is of the men whom 
wx try to educate, the better they will enter into our 
meaning when we try to communicate it to them. 

I need not speak of the value of places in giving an 
interest or reality to history, or of the rich store of 
topographical associations which the English workman, 
and especially the London workman, may possess, if 
there is any one to make him aware of his treasures. 
I can have no remark to make on that subject which 
has not been anticipated in Mr. Stanley's admirable 



v.] .THE STUDIES IN A WOKKING COLLEGE. 147 

Lecture at Exeter Hall. But I would observe, in. 
reference to the larger subject of geography, that I con- 
ceive all instruction upon it ought to start like our 
historical lessons from present topics and interests. 
If you begin with defining continents, and islands, and 
peninsulas, you will be fiiUing into the Dominie Samp- 
son method ; if you take a map of the seat of the war, 
and comment upon it, the elements of the subject, which 
you may seem to have passed over, will gradually be 
acr[uircd in the most satisfactory manner; and you 
may then go on to arrange and organize tlie knowledge 
you have communicated upon it as carefully as you 
will; the more order you can put into the student's 
mind the more grateful he will be to you. 

In these last words I have indicated the rule which 
I should apply to all our studies, but which is specially 
important in reference to Ethics. What we want is not 
to put things into our pupils' minds, so much as to set 
in order what we find there, to untie knots, to disen- 
tangle complicated threads. I cannot conceive a stupider 
or a more useless task than that of prelecting to a set of 
tired artisans, about the benevolent theory and the selfish 
theory of morals, about the Platonical ideas, and the Aris- 
totelian mean, and the Benthamite analysis of motives. 
But if there be in every artisan the seeds of all the 
theories of morals that have ever existed in the world ; 
if you see these seeds bearing fruit in different parts of his 
practice ; if he is the selfish man and tlie benevolent man, 
the idealist and the pursuer of compromises, the seeker of 
pleasm-e and the sufferer of pain a hundred times in the 
same week ; then I know nothing more interesting, or 

l2 



148 THE STUDIES IN A WOEKING COLLEGE. [leCT. 

that may be more useful, tlian to follow out these different 
tracks to the point from which they arise and in which 
they terminate. The effort presumes some knowledge 
of what is going on in the minds of oiu' pupils and in 
our own, together with a sense that it is very frag- 
mentary, and needs to he increased by intercourse with 
them and with ourselves. It presumes also that we have 
sufficient faith in what we have hold of, to be willing 
that it should be subjected to all possible tests ; and 
that we are quite certain that in no possible case shall 
we come at the discovery that wrong means right, and 
falsehood, truth. Like all efforts, it must be attended 
with much humiliation ; but then what a reward ! We 
shall feel, and we shall lead working men to feel, that 
there is a standing ground for their acts and their exist- 
ence, a deeper and a firmer one than they or we had sus- 
pected. I can only repeat the hint about the text of our 
lessons, which I gave when I was speaking of Politics and 
History. It must be furnished by the topic in which we 
find that our pupils are taking the most direct interest, 
whatever that may be. We need care little what the 
occasion is, whether it seems an important or an insig- 
nificant one in our eyes. It catmot be insignificant if it 
is stirring the hearts of any number of people, — if it is 
deeply stirring the hearts of even the one or two we are 
conversing with. If they are attaching an extravagant 
consequence to some trivial point, we shall not make 
them think less of it, by treating them or it with scorn. 
We can only dispossess them of their exaggeration, 
by leading them from the paltry subject-matter to the 
principle which lies beneath it, and which really gives 



v.] THE STUDIES IN A WORKING COLLEGE. 149 

them tlieir interest in it. Wlien they have come into 
the daylight of a principle, they will perceive the relative 
magnitude of different objects which were distorted by 
the twilight and the morning mist. Another hint, 
which may serve to connect this subject with the last, 
is that questions concerning our relations with society 
commonly take stronger hold of men in our day than 
questions concerning individual morality, and that we 
therefore have a better chance of coming to ethics through 
politics, than to politics through ethics. I do not say 
which is abstractedly the best method ; I do not know. 
That which answers its purpose best in any given time 
is the best for that time. 

I must repeat again, because I know how much 
reasonable ridicule we expose ourselves to if the remark 
is not recollected, that in speaking of these studies, I am 
trying to find different channels through which we may 
reach different minds. I take the most general subjects 
first, those which may have an interest for a great number, 
if we do not mar them by our way of handling them. 
But I do not assume that all will care for political 
teaching, or all for ethical, or the same for both. I wish 
to explain how, if they should take but one, they would 
unawares be introduced to some of the lore which strictly 
appertains to the other. Lessons on Morals, I think, 
will be good for nothing if they are not illustrated from 
Biography and History ; nay, if biography and history 
do not supply the substance of them. So also histori- 
•cal lessons will, in my judgment, be far less useful than 
they might be, if they are separated from Poetry and 
Painting. I should expect the plays of Shakspeare and 



150 THE STUDIES IN A WOEKING COLLEGE. [LECT. 

the portraits in the National Gallery — supposing the 
College were in London — to supply continual sugges- 
tions to the Ethical lecturer. I should he surprised if 
he did not often . take a play or a picture as the direct 
and formal subject of his lesson, and if he did not find 
that it served his end better than Paley or Stewart. 
It must be clearly understood that in doing so, he would 
not be poaching on the manor of a teacher who under- 
took to give lessons on Painting or Poetry. I think 
there should be such lessons ; they would meet a number 
of feelings which would be less open to the Ethical 
instructor. If he As^as jealous, he would as often have 
to complain of intrusions from the artists as they from 
him. I do not speak, of course, of direct lessons in 
Drawing, which are invaluable and indispensable on 
other grounds, but of teachings upon the principles of 
the art, or upon the productions of its masters. I pre- 
sume also whenever the musical doctor proceeds beyond 
the mere practice of his art, there must be allusions 
to the character that chords and sounds denote, which 
would be in the strictest sense Ethical. 

The reasons which I gave for the wonderful popu- 
larity of Abelard's Lectures at Paris in the twelfth 
century, will be a sufficient defence for me, when I plead 
for offering instruction in Logic to our working classes. 
If I supposed I should be introducing them to a new 
subject, to one apart from all their previous thoughts 
and habits, I should be obliged, by the maxims whicli 
I have laid down, to reject it from our circle. But 
since the workers speak and think and reason, they ar& 
all logicians in embryo : what they want in this, as in- 



Y.] THE STUDIES IN A WOUKINa COLLEGE. 151 

other cases, is to Lc taught what they arc doing, to 
have their minds set in order about their own opera- 
tions. I am far from sure that the person who undertook 
this task, knowing what it signified, and with a reso- 
lution to avoid pedantry, might not make his lessons 
popular as well as very profitable. I do not indeed 
anticipate a return of the middle age frenzy. I do not 
suppose that if Mr. Mill announced a lecture on Uni- 
versals at Drury Lane Theatre or Exeter Hall, there 
wcTuld be an instant rush for front boxes, and that 
tickets would be unprocurable. But the working man 
who has been used to viigueness often manifests such a 
delight in discovering lines and distinctions which were 
always existing, and which he had not perceived, as the 
student, tired of these lines and distinctions, and longing 
to fill them up with actual forms, cannot appreciate. 
Everything shows what a blessing each may be to the 
other. 

The study of language has been the study of our 
English schools, — it has given them their name. You 
will feel at once that it cannot be pursued in a working 
College under the same conditions which we find in 
them. Latin and Greek can ncA^er be the groundwork 
of a mechanic's education. The love of intellectual 
acquisition for its own sake exists only in a few — the 
passion for philology only in one here and there ; these 
generally find means of gratifying it, and are transported 
from the working class into the scholar class. For such 
cases we do not wish to provide, if we could. But does 
it follow that the objects which our Grammar-schools 
propose to themselves in their culture, arc not objects 



152 THE STUDIES IN A WORKINa COLLEGE. LECT. 

which we should seek after, and which the working 
people themselves desire? The best good that any 
scholar gets from his Latin or Greek schooling is the 
reverence for words ; a belief in their vitality and 
power; a capacity of tracing them from their roots 
through the diiferent stages of their growth ; a dread of 
the corruption which they contract both in the schools 
and the world ; a lively pleasure in recovering them to 
their proper use, not only by observing that use in the 
best and most considerate writers, but also by listening to 
the speech of those who have retained some of their lost 
meanings in their provincialisms. All these benefits the 
scholar may owe to other tongues, but he turns them to 
the account of his own. He is not more fond of exotics, 
but more tenacious of the idioms, or at all events the prin- 
ciples, of his language, than other people. Why then 
can he not communicate what he has received, to those 
whose training must be chiefly in English ? Why 
cannot he lead them to observe the etymologies, powers, 
and distinctions of the words which they are continually 
uttering ; why may he not cultivate in them the respect 
for their own native speech, and the feeling of respon- 
sibility in the use of it, which he owes to his own 
discipline ? I am far from thinking that some working- 
men may not wish to learn another language besides 
their own — French, German, or Latin — and that they 
should not have facilities for doing so. But first of all, 
I would have special lessons upon words — the words 
which occur in the most familiar conversation, as well 
as on technical words ; those which have the widest 
range and the greatest depth of signification How 



v.] THE STUDIES IN A WORKING COLLEGE. 153 

mucli may be done in this way, is sufficiently proved by 
Mr. Trench's book on Words, which arose out of lectures 
delivered to the elder boys in a parish school. The 
interest which the lectures excited among them, and 
their popularity among all classes of readers, show 
clearly enough that there is a demand for this kind 
of instruction, which might be satisfied if scholars could 
only do themselves the highest of all services, by con- 
senting to become as little children. 

I shall have been greatly mistaken indeed, if I am 
supposed to undervalue physical studies because I have 
spoken at so much length of these human studies. 
Natural studies, it seems to me, have been unfairly 
treated in not being regarded as parts of a human 
discipline ; as belonging, not to things only or chiefly, 
but to men. The highest of them all is surely that which 
we call, by way of eminence, Physiology ; and this 
because it has a more direct relation to the human being 
than any other has. I believe there are the most ob- 
vious, practical reasons, — reasons which any benevolent 
man will at once recognise, why lessons on the human 
body should be given to working people, and should 
occupy a place above even those that touch most closely 
upon their occupations. This subject at once brings us 
into contact with the laws of health, with the conditions 
of the poor man's dwelling, therefore with all those com- 
mon things of which I was speaking in the last lecture. 
The experiences of the working man, — his bitterest suf- 
ferings, — show him the need he has of this culture ; the 
reward of receiving it would be an admiration of the 
curious and wonderful frame which has been given him, 



154 THE STUDIES IN A WOEKING COLLEGE. [LECT. 

and a higher sense of his own moral responsibility for 
the use of it. Such lessons would promote the objects 
which the Temperance Societies have at heart, better, 
perhaps, than any pledges. A knowledge of the mis- 
chief and curse of drunkenness may be useful ; but 
surely it is better for a man to know that he may be, 
and that all classes will help him in being, something 
better than an animal. For sottishness will always 
exist where there is despair : you will never cure it 
except by kindling hope. 

When I was speaking of Mechanics' Institutes, I 
dwelt upon the necessity of teaching the class for whom 
they were originally designed, the laws upon which their 
Machines have been constructed, and which they obey ; 
that is a way to show that the worker obeys another kind 
of laws himself. One cannot carry out the principle of 
Dr. Birkbeck too far ; our object should be to discover 
how we may make it more effectual ; how we may give 
the mechanic a fuller and clearer impression of its truth 
and of its connexion with his own life. He will not 
lose the sense of that connexion at all, if, besides 
giving him the opportunity of studying practical me- 
chanics, we offer him that instruction in the principles of 
mathematics, for which so many of his class have mani- 
fested a desire, and which they have obtained without 
our aid. From thence the way will be open to any 
even of the highest physical sciences, into which very 
few, perhaps, may seek a thorough initiation, but which 
should be within the reach of all. 

I have often felt as if the phrases * manly education ' 
— ' education for men ' — whicli I have used so often in 



y.] THE STUDIES IN A WOEKINa COLLEGE. 155 

these Lectures, must liave an offensive sound, as if I 
were devising a teaching which should be confined to 
one sex. But I have adopted these phrases deliberately, 
being certain that by employing them, I am doing my 
best to vindicate a high education for women. Where 
the education of men is not manly — where it is effemi- 
nate — they will always be disposed to degrade their 
wives and sisters ; they will always be suspicious of 
their rivalry. When it has been most masculine — as in 
Qu^en Elizabeth''s days, — the culture of women has been 
free and noble in the same proportion. This remark is 
no less true of the working class, than of every other.. 
I look forward to no result of a College with so much 
pleasure as to the improvement which I trust it will 
make in those evenings which the man spends, not there, 
but in his own dwelling. At the same time, I appre- 
hend that much of the teaching I have described would 
be as applicable to women as to men. And I hopefully 
trust that if our present experiment should be at all 
successful, we may be able to adapt some modification of 
it very speedily to the use of females. There will be 
this great advantage in such a course, that we shall be 
able to claim the help of English ladies in following 
it out. Parts of it may, perhaps, be more advan- 
tageously managed by men. But the whole subject of 
domestic economy, many lessons respecting health, 
many respecting practical ethics, will not only come 
with greater force and influence from persons of their 
own sex, but would be, probably, full of follies and 
blunders, if they proceeded from ours. 



156 THE STUDIES IN A WOEKINCr COLLEGE. [leCT. 

I had hoped to say a few words on the subject of 
Amusements, which Mr. Dickens has lately obliged us 
all to think of; but I find that I must defer this till next 
week, or I shall not have time to tell you what I think 
about the teaching of Theology. Perhaps you will be of 
opinion that I have anticipated the greatest difficulty on 
this subject, when I alluded to the doctrines of the Secu- 
larists and the Anti-Secularists, and expressed my assent 
to the judgment of the first, that we may teach any study 
whatever without insisting that any other whatever shall 
be taught along with it, and my entire sympathy with the 
second, in their professed belief that man is a spiritual 
being, and that all education is good only so far as it 
proceeds upon that supposition. But that statement would 
not be a sufficient justification to me, for offering specific 
instruction in Theology, if I had not the same reason to 
give for that course, which I have given for teaching 
Politics and Logic. Unless I felt sure that the working 
men were divines in embryo as well as logicians in 
embryo, — in other words, that they must think about 
Divinity, whether we speak to them of it or not; unless 
I believed that their vague thoughts about it interfere 
with the feeling that they are men and have the rights 
of men — and that it is possible to give their thoughts 
harmony, and so to do more for the freedom and the 
order of their minds than by any other of our lessons ; 
I should rather avoid a subject which no man of common 
sense or ordinary experience hopes to handle without 
giving offence. Having that conviction very strongly 
and deeply rooted in my mind, so strongly that it must 



y.] THE STUDIES IN A WOKKING COLLEGE. 157 

liave its expression in every lesson of mine on any subject, 
if it did not find this direct outlet, I tliink it would be 
dishonest to the working people if I did not give them 
notice of it, by using a word which is likely to frighten 
many of them. Of course no one need take more of our 
instruction than he likes ; but he has a right to know 
what sort of people they are who offer it ; he has cause to 
complain if they sail under false colours. If I asked 
any one to suppress his convictions, I should feel as if 
I were under a sort of obligation to stifle my own ; but 
as I think all peril to truth as well as charity lies in 
evasions and concealments — and that there will be most 
safety, and most tenderness of others, when every one 
speaks out that which is deepest in him — I must exercise 
the privilege of which I count it a shame and a folly that 
we should deprive any. And as I make that our defence 
for giving a substantive place to Theology in om- College 
course, so it is upon this principle that I should wish to 
see it taught. There are those who suppose that if we 
excite any one to tell that which makes him discontented 
with us and our conclusions, or what he takes to be our 
conclusions, we must be propagating doubts and divisions. 
I can only say that I have tried, and I believe it to be the 
best method of delivering our pupils and ourselves from 
doubts and divisions, of leading them and us to know 
where we are standing, and what we have to stand upon. 
If I believed that Truth belonged to us and that we 
could settle strifes, I should think and act otherwise. 
Believing that Truth is of God, and that our divisions 
come from our narrow and partial apprehensions of it, 



158 THE STUDIES IN A WORKING COLLEGE. [LECT. 

I ■would ask Him to vindicate it, and to cstablisli Unity 
in His own way. If I tliouglit that we could give men 
Freedom or Order, I should leave the science of Theology 
alone ; I should suppose that no such science existed. 
I would teach it, because I believe that God desires 
Freedom and Order for us, and will help us to desire 
them and claim them for ourselves. 



VI.] THE TEACHEES IN A WOEKINa COLLEGE. 159 



LECTURE VI. 

THE TEACHEES IN A WOEKING COLLEGE. 

The subject wliicli I am to consider this morning 
presents more difficulties than any upon which I have 
spoken to you yet. They are difficulties, which I be- 
lieve can be overcome ; otherwise I should not have 
begun this course of Lectures. But I have no wish to 
conceal from myself or from you, how serious they are. 
I am not to show, as I did in my first Lecture, that an 
Education for Adults is demanded by the present cir- 
cumstances of England; that such an Education has 
existed among us from the earliest times ; that out of it 
our schools for boys and girls have developed themselves. 
I am not to show, as I tried to do in my second, that an 
Education which is united with Work, is demanded by 
the present circumstances of England, and that such 
a combination is justified by a long array of unexcep- 
tionable precedents. I am not to show, as I did in my 
third, that the discouragements to this attempt which 
arise from our false notions of Labour and of Learning 
must be combatted, unless the freedom and civiliza- 
tion — even the commerce — of England, are to die ; not, 
as I did in the fourth, that there are great encoui'age- 



160 THE TEACHERS IN A WORKING COLLEGE. [lECT. 

ments to set off against these discouragements, in the 
desire which the working people have manifested for 
certain kinds of Education, in fact, from their readi- 
ness to receive any Education which speaks to them 
as human beings, and awakens or satisfies the craving 
in them for freedom and order; not, as I did in my 
last Lecture, that it is possible to imagine a number 
of studies, each of which would have an attraction 
for some of their body, — each of which, even if taken 
by itself, would contribute to the objects which all 
Education is to aim at, and which have an affinity and 
inward relation to each other. But I am to consider 
whether it is possible to establish such an Education as 
this in England, and to find teachers who will carry 
it on. 

Not for the 'sake of deferring this question, but in 
hopes of gaining some light upon it, I shall allude 
first to another question, which I passed over through 
want of time in my last Lecture. I dwelt, perhaps 
sufficiently, on the studies which should be comprised in 
a College course. I said nothing directly of the Amuse- 
mmts which some demand even more earnestly than 
studies for those who are engaged all day in hard work. 
The great general plea for amusements is the necessity 
which is felt for them, by the higher classes, whose ordi- 
nary toils are so much less severe. There is an additional 
argument for them derived from the reports which have 
reached us, especially in Mr. Mayhew's book on ' London 
Labour and the London Poor,^ of the miserable recrea- 
tions which our people have devised for themselves in 
default of the better which might have been offered to 



YI.] THE TEACHEES IN A -WOEKING COLLEGE. IGl 

tliem. In reference to the first subject — tlie great demand 
for amusement among those who seem as if they had no 
"business besides that — one cannot help recollecting the 
remark of an eminent man, playing on Avhat he sup- 
posed to be the derivation of the word, that ' no doubt 

* it was very desirable for people to retire at times from 
' the Muses, only he should like to know what time 

* they spent with the Muses. If the string of the bow,* 
he added, ' Avas ever stretched, it would be more easy to 
^ determine when and how it should be relaxed.' I 
quote his remark not for the sake of enforcing it against 
a particular class, but rather of showing how it may be 
applied to a class for which it was not intended. Tlie 
makers of coats and shoes are certainly not bound by 
their ordinary occupations to be icith the Muses; the 
thought of their company, if they once entertained it, 
might, one would hope, be rather a relief than a burden. 
And it is not ' relaxation ' that they or that any men 
chiefly crave for. There may be a state — I am told there 
is, of hopeless drawling effeminacy in some men, who 
have early exhausted all modes of pleasure, which pro- 
nounces all effort of any kind whatever, a bore. The 
cases are worthy to be noted ; the Helots of luxury should 
be exhibited in their worst excesses, that young men 
may see and fear. But in general, people of all ages 
wish to be roused out of torpor. The stimulus may be 
of a kind which tends to produce great torpor afterwards ; 
but the demand for it is a practical confession that 
torpor is wholly unsuited to our state, that it is quite 
intolerable. Do not suppose that men, Avho are working 
all day for their bread, are in this respect difibrcnt from 

:m 



1^2 'I'lir: Ti:Ar:iii:i:s in a avorktno C()LLF/;r.. [lfxjt. 

Ilicir fcllow-creatiircs. The. g-ln palaces may lend at 
last to Htii])or and oblivion, lnit their first tcin])tatioii is 
cxcitcnicnt, l^ive-ry ])ciniy theatre promises tlie same 
reward; no ease ior iacnllies Ihat liiive l)een ovcr- 
{^Irelchcd, l)ii( :i temporary awakening to faculties that 
have heen benumLed. 

If this is so, tlien tlie desire for recreation among 
those who are hard-worked, does not make teaching 
liopelcss, provI(h'd leaelilii!^- takes a reasonable form, 
provided it is not an eilbrt to cast new burdens upon a 
spirit already crushed and jaded, but an attempt to 
give that S})irit exercise, that it may be more ca])ahh>. of 
sustaining tlie burden ^vhieh it has already to bear. 
Tiien, again, if this is so, we shall not give any pedantic 
scliool restriction to the word Mcaching.' Whatever 
■tends to make the man more human, is a part of educa- 
tion, not something beside i(. Our ancestors certainl}^ 
had this feeling. They sup])oscd that tl^e seats of 
learning were to raise tlie tone of the country in every 
respect; that whatever belonged to r(>fnieni(Mit and cul- 
ture it was their business to dilVuse. ^riiey did not 
perform their function very well. The enli'rtainments 
one reads of, as given by them in tlu' j)rogressea of 
Qiiecu J*jlizabeth and James J. must liave become 
very formal and artificial. Milton s])enks of those in 
liis tiuu^, as^ sim])ly ridiculous. ' ^There, while they 

* acted,' he says, ' and over-acted, among other }'oung* 

* scholars 1 was a spectator. I'hey thought themselves 
^ gallant men, and I tliouglit them fools. They made 

* sport, and I laughed. They mispronounced, and I 

* misliked. And to make up the Atticism, they were 



VI.] TIIK TEACHERS IN A WORKING COLLEGE. 1G3 

' out, arid I hissed.' But there was in these relics and 
corruptions of an old practice, the indication of wliat it 
had once meant. The University was to train the 
whole man, not merely one part or side of him ; .it was 
not to suffer any instruments which could serve for the 
elevation of the liuman soul, to become instruments in 
brutalizing it. There was the example in old Home 
liow tlie games and spectacles of a great people might 
call forth its worgt and most savage tendencies, those 
that were making it the tyrant of the world which it was 
meant to civilize. There was the example of Catholic 
Spain, how all that was most dark and dangerous in 
the character of its inhabitants, all that mingled most 
readily with its superstitions and was stimulated by its 
gold, could receive a yet Avorse and more malignant 
character from its bull-fights. Did it not behove patri- 
otic men to save their land from the like abominations, 
by showing that the eye and the ear are not to be Jeft 
untrained, but are to be made subservient to right and 
honourable uses, not to those which are debasing and 
shameful ? Alas ! in this and in so many other cases, 
to some of wliich I have alluded before, the caste 
morality in the upper classes, and even in the seats of 
learning, drove out tlie higher, truer, national morality^ 
The entertainments of the Court severed themselves 
from the entertainments of the people. The people 
were encouraged to be brutal ; the refinements of the 
Court became efieminate and corrupt. The Puritan 
ministers, not without tlie greatest excuse, but wholly 
against the judgment of Milton, Colonel utchinhon 
and their wisest men, strove to put down botli, Eotlt 

M 2 



164 THE TEACHEES IN A WORKING COLLEGE. [LECT. 

reappeared after the Eestoration, more debased, more 
inhuman, just in proportion as they more belonged to 
classes. The amusements of the lower orders, coarse 
and degrading as they were, were yet free from the 
systematic villany that was tolerated and admired on 
the stage, which received its tone and encouragement 
from the higher. Many attempts have been made at 
reformation since ; some very unsuccessful, some not 
without a great promise of blessing. If we examine 
them carefully, I think we shall perceive that no good 
has come to the amusements of the higher class, except 
where they have sought to strengthen and refresh them- 
selves by intercourse with the lower, to repair a jaded 
conventionalism by drawing new life from that wdiich 
is essentially human ; that no good has come to the 
entertainments of the lower classes, except from the 
same cause differently working, from their perceiving 
that they w^ere interested in whatever has an interest 
for human beings. 

The conclusion to which I come is this. The bodily 
energies being given to man by his Creator, and bemg 
liable to all abuse — the senses being given to man by 
his Creator, and being liable to all abuse — no education 
can be sound and true which makes light of either, 
which does not treat the development of them as a 
solemn duty, not merely as a bye work. The more we 
look upon man as a spiritual being, the more we regard 
education as intended to bring forth his spirit, the more 
we shall desire to train his animal nature and his 
senses, because they w^ll certainly enslave his spirit, if 
they are not made its servants. This being the general 



VI.] THE TEACHERS IN A WORKING COLLEGE. 165 

rule, its application will be different in different time?, 
and places, and circumstances. It may be most desir- 
able that there should be formal gymnastics in connexion 
with a London College, where the opportunities for 
exercise are rare, and the occupations often sedentary. 
For agricultural labourers, living in the open air, cricket 
and other games would, I should conceive, be im- 
measurably better. With respect to the other branch 
of cultivation, the concert would be desirable, and 
in general, under some form or other, attainable, in 
great towns ; — some substitute for it would be found, 
I doubt not, in the country. The eye has a right to its 
own education, as well as the ear ; how it should be con- 
ducted may depend on a number of circumstances, 
which it is impossible to enumerate or anticipate. Pro- 
bably the discovery of what is really the most suit- 
able method must be attained in all cases through a 
number of unsuccessful experiments. There is always 
a danger of assuming that what was good as an in- 
strument of education in one age — Avhat may be still 
very useful in another country — is necessarily good for 
our time and land ; there is the equal danger of re- 
fusing to profit by the lessons of former times, and of 
surrounding nations. From the instance of Music to 
which I alluded in a former Lecture, we may judge how 
rash speculations are, respecting the capacities and dis- 
positions of those whom we would train ; how necessary 
it is to observe with care, what are the influences that 
affect them most powerfully. My own opinion would 
certainly be, that while no nation has more of the 
dramatic faculty than the English, or is more capable of 



166 THE TEACHERS IN A WOKKING COLLEGE. [leCT. 

contemplating history as a great providential drama, 
there is less of what is histrionic in ns than in the 
people of the continent ; less that is likely to receive 
impressions from the acted play. On that gromid, I 
should hope more from exhibitions like those which the 
Crystal Palace offers, than from any attempts to purify 
and restore entertainments which many of our coun- 
trymen look upon with utter aversion, because they 
connect them with a number of evil accidents, cer- 
tainly not belonging to their essence. I am not, how- 
ever, in the least sure that I am right ; some facts would 
lead to quite a different inference. And I would say, 
once for all, that while in those questions which concern 
self-indulgence we owe the greatest respect and homage 
to the feelings of every honest man — while deference to 
Ihem, when nothing but this is involved, will be always 
beneficial to our own characters ; — all danger of giving 
offence ought to be risked the moment we are fully 
convinced, after careful deliberation, that the step we 
are taking will tend to give a more moral and humane 
tone to our fellow-citizens. That end is too important 
to be sacrificed to an object so paltry as that of keeping 
up a good reputation for ourselves, with any persons 
Avhatsoever. And so far from injuring their consciences, 
we may often do them much good by teaching them to 
distinguish between the self-seeking which they ought 
to condemn in the pursuit of pleasure, and in every 
pursuit, and those acts which, when they are not con- 
demned by an express law, are good or evil, according 
to the purpose for which they are done, and the spirit 
in which they are done. This distinction is so precious 



VI.] THE TEACHERS IX A WORKINa COLLEGE 167 

to the interests of tlie liigliest as well as of the vulgarest 
morality, and the pains which are taken to obliterate it, 
by some who ventm^e to lay down laws for society, are 
so perilous to the faith and honesty of England, that 
we should make great efforts, and incur serious risks, 
for the sake of asserting it. In proportion as the upper 
classes feel the responsibility which is laid upon them, 
by all possible means to bring out in themselves and 
those from whom they are divided by circumstances, 
that which is common to both, — in that proportion will 
they be able to establish this distinction upon a tme and 
safe ground. 

This is the connecting link between the subject of 
amusements and the one which I announced for the 
present Lecture. The experiment of a Working College, 
which some of us wish to make in London, has been 
made already in Sheffield. The history of that experi- 
ment, as I have heard it, is very interesting. The neces- 
sity for it in that great manufacturing town was felt by 
various benevolent persons, as well as by many of the 
workers themselves. A scheme was devised, in which 
men of different opinions took part. It was found 
that they did not work wxll together. It was feared 
that the whole scheme must be abandoned. A dis- 
senting minister of Sheffield undertook the conduct of 
it when its condition seemed to be desperate, and, as I 
have been informed, gave it its present shape, and for 
some time upheld it and directed it himself. When, 
after two or three years, he left the neighbourhood, the 
people who had been benefited by it resolved that it 
should not fall. They have supported it, and ad- 



16S THE TEACHERS IN A WORKING COLLEGE. [lECT. 

ministered it themselves. Last autumn so eminent a 
man as Dr. Lyon Playfair proclaimed it as one of the 
greatest movements in modern scientific education. 
Nearly all the London newspapers, I believe, com- 
piented on his words, and noticed the Sheffield insti- 
tution as a striking phenomenon of this age. 

Such, I am sure, we shall be right in considering it. 
Every step in the story is full of instruction and en- 
couragement. The failure of the attempt to establish it 
by an appeal to the public, the energy of an individual 
man who had faith to believe that what was to be done 
could be done, whatever the public might say to it ; 
above all, the proof which the Sheffield people have 
given that they care for education, and will have it, and 
can conduct it in an orderly, intelligent manner, in- 
creasing their numbers and their range of studies, as 
I hear they do, each year, is a fact to be dwelt upon 
with serious thankfulness. Whatever we can do, any 
of us, to strengthen the hands of those who have 
entered upon such a work, as w^ell as to imitate them, 
we surely are bound to do. Our business is not to 
criticise their course of instruction. The suitableness of 
it for themselves, they are much better able to judge of 
than we are. All we can desire is, that they should 
work out their plan vigorously and thoroughly. So best 
they w^ill find out if there are any defects in it which 
need to be repaired. What I feel about it is, that if we 
do not claim our share in the work which they have 
not of choice but of necessity, and apparently with the 
best possible feeling, taken upon themselves, we shall 
miss a great benefit which, for the sake of all classes, 



TI.] THE TEACHERS IN A WORKING COLLEGE. 169 

we cannot afForcT to miss. I am glad that, anywhere, iii 
any town of England, manual workers should have 
shown the spirit which they have in Sheffield. But I 
do not think that we have a right to expect it of 
them generally. I do not think it is intended that 
we should be cheated of the fruits of the education 
which it has pleased God to bestow upon any of us, 
as I feel confident we shall be cheated of them, if we 
are not able in some way to distribute them. It may 
be" determined, in the counsels of Providence, that 
the professional men of England, as well as the upper 
classes of England, should not have this honour. It 
may be that every good which the labourers get is to 
be won for themselves. If such a sentence has gone 
forth, I can only regard it as the most fearful hand- 
"writing upon the wall: — 'You are weighed in the 

* balance, and found wanting. The kingdom which 
' your cultivation would give you, so long as you 
' used it as God's servants for the use of His children, is 

* taken from you, because you have accounted it your 

* own.' Some prophet's eye may even now discern those 
characters in the scroll whicli contains our country's 
destiny. But till they stand out clearly and legibly, — 
nay, even if they did — our business would be to seek 
by a timely repentance that the decree might be 
averted. 

I believe that it is most desirable for the working 
classes that it should be averted. I think that we can 
give them a cultivation which they are not able to give 
themselves. For the sake of avoiding quarrels and 
discussions they will often be obliged to stint themselves 



170 THE TEACHERS IN A WORKING COLLEGE. [lECT. 

of a laiowledge wliich, at all events, many of tlieni 
want. If they seek that knowledge, it must come in 
a more irregular and exciting way, not as a part of 
education, but in the form of declamation and contro- 
versy. A knowledge so coming, will be partial class 
knowledge. It will not have the elevating, humanizing 
effect that it might have, if they felt clearly that it came 
from the pages of history, where there is no respect of 
persons, where each class is tried and judged and con- 
demned by its own acts, because history is the voice of 
God, and utters in fragments and portions the sentence 
wliich He will at last pronounce fully for the universe. 

I know well how hard it is, and must be, to persuade 
working men any where, especially those intelligent 
working men who are likely to desire instruction, that 
we do not mean to make our teaching subservient to our 
own purposes, that we do not wish to make the history 
of the past and the experience of the present, echo our 
own conclusions, and apologise for our own injustice. 
It is most hard to remove this suspicion ; it ought to be 
most hard. We have played falsely with facts; we have 
bent and twisted evidence to the justification of our 
own school and party and class, and to the condemna- 
tion of every other. We must pay the penalty for 
these crimes. The expiation cannot be a very brief one. 
But it is possible to establish confidence, if we are will- 
ing to make efforts and sacrifices for it. It is possible 
to show that we love the truth more than our opinions 
and ourselves, if we do love it more. And there will 
be the rich reward of teaching others to love it more 
than themselves and their opinions, and so of making 



YI.] THE TEACHEES IN A WOEKING COLLEGE. 171 

them in very deed our fellow- citizens and fellow- 
workers. 

We have got to this point then : I have claimed for 
those who call themselves the educated classes of 
England, at least the privilege and the right of helping 
the manual workers to educate themselves. But having 
defined our teachers so far, we are only at the beginning 
of our task. The Sheffield experience comes in to baffle 
us. The hopeless English public, with its infinite 
varieties of sect opinions, class opinions, individual 
opinions, what can we do with that? Sheffield says, 

* Nothing.' Will London give a different answer? I 
should say, ' Beyond all doubt, it will give the same 

* answer.' 

I am far from saying that an appeal might not be 
made to the religious, or benevolent, or wealthy public, 
as it is called in advertisements, in favour of an Educa- 
tion for working men ; that powerful statements might 
not be put forth about their ignorance and degi-ada- 
tion, their addiction to evil books and instructors, and 
the necessity of a strong and combined effort on the 
part of those in superior situations, to extirpate their 
bad principles and give them better. I am far from 
saying that such an appeal might not be responded to ; 
that Patrons, Vice-Presidents, and a Committee might 
not be organized, that subscription lists might not be 
opened at various bankers, and might not gain fresh 
names after each energetic harangue, or each report with 
the statistics, which some read and a few believe. But 
when all this has been done, what has been gained? 
I am afraid rather less than nothing. We have spread 



172 THE TEACHERS IN A WORKING COLLEGE. [LECT. 

the notion tliat we are raising a charitable fund, and 
these working people do not want our charity, and will 
not accept it. We have led them to think that we 
suspect them, and they will return the suspicion a hun- 
dred fold. We have talked of giving them our princi- 
ples instead of theirs, and are we quite sure tliat we 
have made it clear by our acts that they would gain by 
the exchange? Then, supposing we could get our 
institution established, would it move? Would there 
not be continual assumptions, interferences, complaints, 
which make other works disagreeable, but Education, 
if they are allowed to influence it, impossible. Either 
the teacher must boldly proclaim the Busby principle, 
and keep his hat on his head when the many-headed 
king enters his schoolroom, in which case he will be 
pronounced a direct rebel, and probafbly be dismissed ; 
or he must submit to a constraint which will destroy all 
harmony in his studies, and all respect in his scholars. 
By all means, let our colleges and schools be open to 
the criticisms of the public, and let the conductors of 
them know how to make use of those criticisms. But 
let them be men who feel that they did not receive their 
commission and their power from the public ; who mi- 
derstand that they can be of no use to it while they hold 
themselves bound by its edicts and maxims. 

May we then hope that the Government of the country 
will, after due consideration, establish an Education for 
adult working men, and provide suitable teachers to 
carry it on ? It would be easy to say many sharp things 
about the failures of successive Governments to esta- 
blish any general Education for children, and thence to 



VI.] THE TEACIIEES IN A WOEKING COLLEGE. 173 

argue how far tliey would "be likely to enter into a 
new and more difficult line. But I do not impute these 
failures to the insincerity or the weakness of one set of 
ministers or another. I believe there has been a hearty 
desire in many, perhaps in all, to do whatever the country 
would let them do for its teaching, and a willingness to 
incur risks for the sake of ascertaining what it is pos- 
sible to do. 

I know that some consider the practical conclusion 
at which we have arrived, a lame and impotent one. It 
seems to them that a Government ought to go much 
further than merely to stimulate the efforts of different 
classes by the promise of assistance, and to prevent their 
efforts from being futile, by sending inspectors to see 
v/hether the work done corresponds to the professions of 
those wlio do it. They complain that the exceptions 
from this rule in the case of those who transgress the 
law, and, possibly, of paupers, give those an advantage 
who are the least entitled to one. All such observations 
have great plausibility ; but, perhaps, the more we trace 
the history of English education during the last twenty 
years, the more we shall doubt whether they are solid. 
I do not mean merely, that such an examination may 
show us how very little right we have to charge Govern- 
ment with not undertaking a task, which our dissensions 
have hindered them from undertaking, but that Provi- 
dence has shaped our ends better than we should have 
shaped them for ourselves, and that if we accept facts 
which we cannot alter, and seriously weigh the respon- 
sibilities which devolve upon ourselves in consequence 
of them, we may obtain an Education more suitable to 



174 THE TEACHERS IN A WOEKING COLLEGE. [lECT. 

the English character, more helpful to Freedom and 
Order, than any which the best and most paternal 
Government in the world could bestow upon us. I admit 
the inference which the working people of the land 
draw, and must draw, when they see that wrong doers 
are cared for by the State while they appear to be over- 
looked. I believe the greatest obligation is laid upon 
us to take off the edge of that inference. We can take 
it off, if we show them that they may be all the more 
true and manly citizens of the State, because they are 
not harnessed and driven by it, as those must be who 
have forfeited their moral dignity, and as all are in 
despotic countries, where moral dignity is not thought 
of. If we are able to begin an adult Education, the 
Government, according to its own principle, will help 
us, and will see whether we are fulfilling our pretensions 
or belying them. To a College of the kind I am sup- 
posing, it may render especial service by means of those 
Schools of Design which it has already established. But 
if we wait for the Government to originate the College, 
or to conduct it, we may wait till the present generation 
has died out, and not secure any thing that will be 
worth leaving to its successor. 

I alluded, in my first Lectiire, to some earnest men 
who expected little from the public or from the State, in 
providing an Education for any class or any age, but 
who thought that our old cathedral establishments had 
been intended for the cultivation and elevation of our 
people generally, and that they might be restored to 
their original purpose. Whether the experience of 
fifteen years has chilled or encouraged these expectations. 



VI.] THE TEACHERS l^ A WOKKINa COLLEGE. 175 

I do not venture to pronounce. ' Hope,' certainly, 
* springs immortal in the Imman breast,' or, as another 
poet has it : — 

"Oh joy ! that in our embers 
Is somethiug that doth live, 
That yet we should remember 
What were so fugitive," 

as the good resolutions which some of these bodies 
seemed to form in the days when they were threatened 
with utter extinction. It never can have been wrong 
for any to have longed or laboured for the recovery 
of goodly buildings and great foundations to a 
patriotic use. But till the objects which were contem- 
plated by the founders of our Cathedral schools are 
accomplished, nothing can be so absurd as to ask that 
they should promote objects which can never have been 
contemplated. If our Chapters will do their utmost to 
train boys, they may fairly decline to undertake the 
ofiice of teaching men. Possibly they may do some- 
thing many years hence to assist that work too ; but it 
must be begun, I conceive, by other hands than theirs. 

Can we look for those hands in our Universities? 
I own I expect great blessings to the working class 
from the new impulse, which I trust will be given to 
the education of the land generally, by the present 
University reform. I have already shown how much 
the principle of adult teaching is involved in that reform. 
The desire which all parties have shown, according to 
their different notions, to bring College teaching within 
the reach of poor men, is also a promising symptom, 
though unreasonable hopes may be raised upon it. 
The new position of Oxford with regard to Dissenters, 



176 THE TEACHERS IN A WORKING COLLEGE. [LECT. 

if somewhat embarrassing to itself, must oblige its rulers 
to consider more seriously than they have done, all the 
circum'stances of the country which they are intended 
to illuminate. Supposing that Colleges were established 
in London, and Birmingham, and ]\Ianchester, the 
Universities would, I trust, entertain the question in 
a free and generous spirit, what degrees they might 
confer on those who deserved well in them ; how, 
at least, they might remove all obstacles which fees 
put in the way of the very poorest man who should 
aspire to such distinctions. In Oxford and Cambridge 
they may do much to help the shopkeeper and the 
mechanic to obtain an education which they could 
scarcely gain elsewhere. I am told that there are 
ancient customs in the University of Oxford, which in- 
dicate an evident design to connect it with the trades of 
the town. The Vice-Chancellor, for instance, has from 
time immemorial given an annual dinner, or supper, to 
the hair-dressers of Oxford, they being regarded as a 
guild or corporation, with which the guild or corpora- 
tion of learned men was to claim affinity, and to which 
it was to give a higher character. If these intentions 
could be carried out in their principle — not, of course, in 
their form — there might be a very honourable adjustment 
of the old quarrel of Town and Gown ; the toga pre- 
serving rather more dignity than the fists and sticks of 
the Under-graduates can procure for it. But it is ob- 
vious that though the Universities may set an example, 
they can do very little to provide actual teaching for 
men whose work lies in the streets of the metropolis, 
ro the factories of the north. They may provide some 



YI.] THE TEACIIEES IN A WORKING COLLEGE. 177 

of tlie teachers ; but the teachers must have left the 
schools and gone out into the world. 

There are, however, institutions established in Lon- 
don, as well as in the provinces, which have a directly 
educational object. Some of these bodies are becoming 
strongly alive to the duties Tvhich they owe to the pre- 
sent time, and anxious to promote the well-being both 
of their own neighbourhoods and of the whole land. 
The Society of Arts, above all, is exerting itself, in its 
hundredth year, with quite juvenile freshness and 
alacritv. There seems to be as much wisdom as there 
is zeal, in those who are directing it. And that wisdom 
has led them, as it has led the Government, to feel that 
they can do much more good by uniting and animating 
bodies which already exist, and by supplying them 
with a machinery, than they could do if they set on 
foot an education of their own. They do not, therefore,, 
satisfy the demand which I am now making, though., 
they may render the greatest service to those, whoevci: - 
they may be, who shall undertake to satisfy it. 

It may occur to you that some one of the English. 
sects, having the unity and organization which a com- 
mon religious profession supplies, might be able to 
undertake this task- better than a number of such sects, 
or than any body of larger extent and higher pretensions,, 
without the same cohesion. I am not competent to 
express an opinion on this subject. If there is any 
body in the land possessing that kind of strength, and, 
willing to exert it, for the sake of giving expansion,, 
freedom, and order, to any portion of the working 
classes, nothing can be so desirable as that it should 

N 



178 THE TEACHEES IN A WOEKING COLLEGE. [lECT. 

make the attempt. Its success in carrying out sucli an 
object would be good for all ; even its failure might be 
a blessing to itself. But those who are not members of 
such a society cannot feel that they are discharged from 
their own obligations by anything that it may do 
without them. All persons who feel the necessity of 
helping the great body of their countrymen, and how 
little they have effected for that object hitherto, must 
still ask themselves, AVhat can we do? with whom can 
we cooperate? 

I have knoTVTi some thoughtful and earnest men, 
learned in the history, especially the ecclesiastical his- 
tory, of past times, not less learned in the necessities and 
calamities of the present time, who have felt that a Sect 
can give little aid in our emergencies, but that an Order 
might give much. They feel how many of the educa- 
tional movements, not only of the middle ages, but of 
later ages, have been owing to the devotion and concen- 
tration of purpose which were found in particular Orders : 
they do not see why the abuses which accompanied 
their growth, and the seeds of which, perhaps, existed 
at their birth, should be considered as inherent in their 
nature ; why Protestantism, instead of repudiating the 
use of them, should not have power to purify the prin- 
ciple of them and convert them to the best ends. The 
subject is so important, and the persons who take this 
view of it are entitled to so much respect and deference, 
that I should be very sorry to treat either hastily. I will 
only state why I think this is not the remedy for the 
particular evil we are considering, whether it is appli- 
cable to other cases or not. 



VI.] THE TEACHERS IN A WORKING COLLEGE. 179 

What we want to make working men feel, is that the 
daily ordinary business of life is compatible with — nay, 
is in strictest harmony with — the best and highest 
knowledge. They have been almost utterly separated 
in their minds, to a great extent they have been sepa- 
rated in ours ; our business is, to reconcile them in both. 
This, I must repeat it again and again, is the only 
ground upon which a school or college, which deals 
with our English popidation as it is, can possibly rest. 
Now an Order proceeds upon a maxim the very opposite 
of this. It assumes that separation from the common 
work of life is the most advantageous and desirable con- 
dition for carrying on the peculiar work to which it 
dedicates itself. I know that there are great apparent 
exceptions to this rule. The Jesuit institution suggests 
the most remarkable. A man may be all the better 
fitted for a place in that Order, because he does not 
obviously belong to it, because he has the habits of a 
man of the world. But we all know that the compen- 
sation in this case is a more intense internal addiction 
to the interests of the Society, and to the words of the 
Superior, than would be called for, where the tie was 
a more acknowledged and palpable one. We may 
therefore assume generally, that an Order expressly for 
Education would consist of persons not Lawyers, not 
Physicians, not Tradesmen, but Teachers simply. That 
would be their duty ; every other would be pursued in 
subordination to that, — would be considered as not 
the proper function of a member. Therefore they 
would not teach just what we want our pupils to 
learn ; their acts, their very existence, would suggest 

N 2 



180 THE TEACHERS IN A WORKING COLLEGE. [LECT. 

the tlioiiglit wliicli we wish, above all others, to 
dispel. 

Yon will perceive that this objection is qnite irre- 
spective of any accidental defects or abuses in these 
Orders. It touches the root and primary intention of 
them. It does not prove that there are no possible cases 
in vvdiich they might be useful for us as well as for other 
nations ; but it does show why they have been generally 
uncongenial to tlie English character, the strength of 
which lies in its reverence for common life, in its belief 
that all common acts and offices are sacred. It does 
show why Orders have been especially suspected by the 
founders and upholders of English Colleges, why Walter 
de Merton and William of AYykeham were almost as 
jealous of them, and as anxious to substitute another 
kind of life for theirs, as Cranmer or Thomas Cromwell 
could be. And it forces us to inquire, how a College 
in our days must be officered, if it is not to be con- 
structed or organized by the Public, or the Govern- 
ment, or the University, or by any chartered Society 
or any voluntary Sect, or any new Order. 

It may seem to some, that I have exhausted the pos- 
sibilities of English life, when I have enumerated these 
sources from which an Education might come. But, in 
tiTith, I have only cleared the ground, that we may look 
at English life in its simplest, best known forms. In 
London, in any considerable provincial town, within a 
small circle of miles in every country district, you find 
men of various callings, with diffi3rent degrees of mental 
power, with different measures of cultivation, all busy, 
€ach able to contribute something to the social improve- 



YI.] THE TEACHERS IN A WORKING COLLEGE. ISl 

ment of the rest, eacli tempted at times to be pedantical 
and over-professional, each tempted at times to be merely 
frivolous, each using a certain portion of his day, and 
desiring to use it, for the good of his less fortunate 
neiorhbours. Men of this kind are often thrown into 
sets, the physician, the lawyer, the clergyman, the 
artist, the mere man of letters, with many more — such as 
are described in all accounts of clubs, metropolitan or 
provincial — such as every one meets with who is con- 
versant with the ordinary stuff of society, not with its 
rarities. Such men have been brought together by 
what in our thoughtless, indevout language we call 
accidents ; they have, probably, many disagreements of 
opinion, latent or expressed ; their connexions and social 
position may be exceedingly unlike. But they can 
work together, not, of course, without collisions and 
conllicts, but, on the whole, with more mutual confidence, 
with fewer formal explanations, with less of reserve and 
compromise, than people more artificially connected. 
Their association may not be firm ; it may depend partly 
upon locality. But there are among them the materials 
for a real fellowship ; limbs not ill-fitted to each other, if 
they were animated by the same spirit, if they were 
trying to lift the same weight. 

A club and a college are very difierent things ; they 
may be wide as the poles asunder. But a Club of ordi- 
nary Englishmen may become a College of intelligent, 
thoughtful men, provided a human purpose takes the 
place of a selfish one, provided they do not meet merely 
as quidnuncs and gossips, but as men who have tasks to 
perform in the world, who wish their tasks to be per- 



182 THE TEACHERS IN A WORKING COLLEGE. [LECT. 

formed intelligently, wlio are sure that they will not be, 
unless tliey are reminded continually of the principles 
wliicli are involved in tliem, of the human beings for 
whose sake they are appointed. A Club — even a society 
too loose and fragmentary for that name — may become 
a College before it has found any pupils, or before it 
is certain whether any are to be found, because each 
member of it feels that he must learn in order to teach, 
that the knowledge he has in his own department needs 
to be compared with that of men who are engaged in 
other departments, and that he must discover what it is 
that combines them. But a man has not sufficient motive 
for this kind of work, not motive enough for testing the 
soundness of his own possessions, unless he has a certain 
set of persons present to his mind, who he hopes will 
some day or other be better for the thoughts which he 
and his friends are exchanging ; they must look beyond 
their own circle, that they may work pleasantly and 
hopefully within it. 

I may not succeed in making all persons understand 
what I mean ; some, I know, will catch it very readily 
from their own experience. You may laugh at the 
notion of a regiment where there are only colonels and 
lieutenant-colonels, and no privates; but educational 
regiments must be formed by this process, or not at all. 
You must have the teachers first ; they must feel that 
they have relations to each other, that they have a clear 
distinct work of their own ; then they can invite scholars 
to join them, not as strangers, but as integral portions 
of their body. Such, if I do not mistake, is the principle 
of our old English Colleges, which I reverence as much 



VI.] THE TEACHERS IX A WORKING COLLEGE. 183 

as those do wlio would set up tlie College idea to tlie 
exclusion and destruction of every other. It is unques- 
tionably a great and blessed thing for any learner to 
feel that hfe is not merely to get a certain portion 
of information, but that he belongs to a body, that he 
is one of a learned commonwealth. This feeling is de- 
stroyed by some of the efforts which are made in this 
day to preserve it. If you treat the student as a 
child, who must be supposed to have thought of nothing, 
though he has thought of a hundred things, — who must 
be credited with an ignorance of all that people are 
disputing about, though he has heard every variety of 
opinion at his father's table, and in twenty other places, 
— he cannot have the sense of citizenship and of moral 
responsibility ; he will know that you wish to keep him 
in leading-strings, and he will try to break them. On 
the other hand, there is no necessity that this feeling of 
unity between the student and his teacher should be 
confined to old societies with historical associations. It 
derives grandeur from them, no doubt; the impression of 
venerable quadrangles and oriel windows is not to be 
spoken of lightly. But the real sympathy must be in 
the persons, not in the buildings. With all their beauty 
and tenderness, they often strike very coldly upon the 
heart which has been used to friendly human counte- 
nances; they are not really loved, till they become 
connected with human beings that live inside of 
them. We may ask rough-handed men, who are 
already members of a factory, to become members 
of a College ; and it is our fault if we do not make 
them understand that we mean a real fellowship of 



184 THE TEACHEKS IN A WORKINit COLLEGE. [LECT. 

mutual learning and teaching, — of actual joint workers, 
— though we liave no beautiful outward symbols of our 
community to set before them. The words University 
and College point to a corporate life, not to a hard 
indoctrination. I doubt whether any teaching of our 
manual workers is possible, unless we can convert these 
words into realities. 

It is a conviction of this kind which has led a few 
friends of mine to propose a College for Working 
Men in the northern part of London. They answer 
with tolerable exactness to the description I have 
given of the persons from whom it is reasonable to 
demand such an effort. They are all at work them- 
selves, in occupations which they believe to be voca- 
tions, and which they do not hold it would be right 
to forsake under any plea of benevolence to their 
fellow-creatures. They do not, therefore, aim at form- 
ing a guild or order of Teachers. They are already 
admitted into their different guilds as members of the 
Inns of Court, or the Colleges of Surgeons or Phy- 
sicians, as Artists, as Ministers of the Gospel, as 
Tradesmen, as Operatives. What they believe is best 
for themselves — best for the special fraternity to which 
they belong, in respect of the work which it is pledged 
to do, as well as of the science which it is pledged to 
advance — is that they should keep up an intercourse with 
men of different callings, and should do what in them 
lies, that those who are engaged merely in manual 
labour should feel that also to be a high calling. They 
may differ among themselves about some of the ways 
in which this end should be accomplished; they are 



yi.] THE TEACHEKS IN A WORKING COLLEGE. 185 

perfectly agreed that one of the ways, and the most 
effectual, is to strive, that the manual worker may have 
a share in all the best treasures with which God has 
been pleased to endow them. They do not think ^ley 
have any business to consider how few of these treasures 
they may possess in comparison with many of their con- 
temporaries ; by all means, let those who have more give 
more ; all they have to do is to ask how they make 
what they have most useful, and how they may increase 
it by communicating it. Their design is far from am- 
bitious. It is not to found a College for the workers of 
England, or of London. It is simply to make an expe- 
riment, necessarily on a very small scale, in the neighbour- 
hood which is nearest to the places in which most of them 
are busy during the day. If Working and Learning are 
to be combined, learning must come to the door of the 
workshop and factory, till the better day when it shall 
be allowed to enter into them. The north of London 
is not a region for great manufactories ; but it is a region 
where there are handicraftsmen of all sorts and descrip- 
tions; it affords a fair enough opportunity for a trial 
though I am far from saying that in Birmingham or 
Manchester, or other parts of the Metropolis, it may 
not be made with greater advantages. 

Indeed, it is this consideration which has induced me 
to speak on this topic at greater length, and with more 
gravity, than you may think at all justified by the very 
humble project which I have announced. It seemed 
to me that we could not shelter ourselves under the 
plea, that a particular effort of this kind is not worse 
than a number of efforts which are born in a night, and 



186 THE TEACHERS IN A WORKING COLLEGE. [lECT. 

die in a night ; and wliicli any persons are at liberty to 
make if they like to bear the punishment of disappoint- 
ment and ridicule. Such pleas are not safe and good 
in any case. No doubt every man is to prepare himself, 
in whatever he undertakes, for the probability of disap- 
pointment and ridicule ; that is part of his regular cost 
and outlay, which he is most improvident if he does not 
count beforehand, and consider whether there is anything 
to set oif on the other side. But no men have a right to 
begin a work which they do not think has a principle 
in it that may live and bear fruit after they are dead 
and forgotten. It is quite possible — it is exceedingly 
likely — that our College may have few or no pupils in 
it, and that any kind friend who asks two years hence, 
with a suppressed smile, ' What have you done in that 

* fine scheme of yours ? ' may have the satisfaction of 
hearing, ' It has come to nothing,' and of saying, ' Just 

* as I prophesied it would.' But it is not likely — it is 
not possible — that the relations between working men 
and the other classes of the community should continue 
what they are now. If we were prophets, or sons of 
prophets, we might possibly have some answer to make 
to our friend, which would not be given with a smile, 
and would scarcely provoke one. As we are only plain 
men, unable to foresee results, we are the more bound 
to take care that we do nothing through our rashness 
which may make the feelings of the classes towards 
each other less friendly than they are already, may omit 
nothing which would contribute to unite them. For the 
upper classes to think they can only obtain what they 
consider indispensable to their comfort, at the price 



YT.] THE TEACHERS IN A WORKING COLLEGE. 187 

of the ignorance and degradation of tlieir fellow-men, — 
for the lower classes to think that the manufacturing 
industry of the country must perish before they can be 
what God created them to be, — is perilous to England. 
Any plans which tend to foster either of these opinions, 
must be mischievous ; the most insignificant attempt to 
show that they are false, may be worth considering. If 
it has fallen into bad and foolish hands, let tiie good 
and wise take it out of them. 

We propose to commence our undertaking next 
November. I do not mean that we shall form our 
College then — that is formed already. The Teachers 
are the members of a Society, into which any persons 
above sixteen years of age, who can read and write, 
and know the first four rules of arithmetic, are eligible 
to enter. We divide our College year into Terms ; we 
even call our adoption of pupils into the College, Matri- 
culation. These phrases indicate what we are aiming 
at. We wish to do what our fathers did when they 
provided Colleges for England, as it was in those days. 
I say for Englarid; I will not make the antithesis sharper 
by saying for the upper and middle classes. For that 
was not their intention at all. They educated English- 
men, to whatever class they might belong. They 
matriculated them into societies regularly organized, 
that they might know they were connected with that 
which is permanent, not merely with that which is arti- 
ficial and transitory ; with what is human and divine, not 
merely with producing and exchanging. This testimony 
is more necessary for London in the nineteenth century, 
than for Oxford and Cambridire in the fourteenth. 



188 THE TEACHERS IX A WORKING COLLEGE. [lECT. 

If we can help to bear it, and so to associate together 
different periods in our country^s history, as well as 
different portions of onr population, we may endure a 
heavier penalty than that of being called pedantical. 

The method of our teaching must, of course, be 
affected by the character of the different subjects ; still 
the general principle of it has been agreed upon ; I may 
say, it lias in a measure been acted on. I alluded in 
my last Lecture to an experiment in Theological in- 
struction which had satisfied me that the consideration 
of the most difficult questions was favourable to earnest- 
ness and reverence. With that experiment our College 
may be said to have originated. A Scripture class has 
been held on Sunday evenings. A book of the Bible is 
read through. The Teacher endeavours to unfold the 
sense of it passage by passage. It becomes the subject 
of conversation. The pupils state their perplexities 
with freedom. He points out what seems to him the 
solution of them. It would be ridiculous to say that this 
plan excludes Dogmatism. The Teacher, of course, 
expresses his own convictions. He does not dream of 
suppressing them because they may not be those of his 
auditors. But as he believes that his pupils cannot re- 
ceive his meaning, however they might receive his words 
and repeat them, if they are merely dead listeners, he 
rejoices much when they prove to him practically, even 
by putting him to a severe probation, that they are not 
so. Though the same course cannot be followed in all 
cases, we have at least determined that we will be Tutors 
rather than Professors, that we will give Lessons not 
Lectures, and that one half of the lessons shall be cate- 



TI.] THE TEACHERS IX A WOKKING COLLEGE. 189 

chetical, and sliall refer to the subject that had been treated 
of when the class last met. As we may not always be 
able to set our pupils tasks and exercises in the interval 
between the Lectures, this plan may in some degree 
supply the place of them, and may assist their memories. 
I need not give you a list of the subjects we mean 
to introduce into our Course. I sketched a general out- 
line of them in the last Lecture ; a special programme 
will be published at the beginning of each term. Politics 
and Public Health will be the innovations. History 
and Geography will be made to illustrate each other. 
Shakspeare's plays will be preferred to Hume when 
we are illustrating the records of our own country ; 
Drawing will be treated with the honour which belong-s 
to it as a most living and practical discipline for the eye 
and the hand, the head and the heart. If we should 
not find that Vocal Music is already taught in our 
immediate neighbourhood, as well and cheaply as it 
can be taught, we shall claim for it a conspicuous place 
in our Course. We shall try to give the study of 
Words as much pre-eminence and dignity in this Colleg*e 
as it has had in any, though we shall teach English 
words and English Grammar before we venture upon 
any modern or classical language. The teachers in the 
different branches of pure Mathematics, and of Natural 
Philosophy, will be in continual communication witJi 
each other. To secure a gradation of studies such as 
they could wish, will of course be difficult. Still we 
have proofs enough of the ardour of working people in 
these pursuits, to believe that it will not be impossible. 
Our teachers will endeavour as far as* they can to avoid 



190 THE TEACHEES IN A WORKING COLLEGE. [lECT. 

technicalities and long words. But they will avoid just 
as earnestly a superficial and frivolous way of treating the 
great facts and laws of the universe, as if they were con- 
descending to the capacities of men immeasurably below 
them, instead of labouring, with the consciousness of 
their own ignorance, to raise men a little more ignorant 
into some apprehension of the meaning of the world in 
which God has placed them, and of the relation in 
which they themselves stand to it. 

As our great object is in all ways to show our respect 
for the working people, not to insult them, we have no 
notion of offering them this education gratuitously. 
They are to pay for it. The fees will be arranged 
according to the scale which is adopted in the principal 
Mechanics' Institutes of London. They will not cover 
the expenses of the College. We want a Library ; and 
though the original teachers will receive nothing, they 
fully hope to raise up teachers among the working men 
themselves, who ought to be properly remunerated. 
This is one of the chief objects which they set before 
themselves, though they never desire to see the time 
arrive when the instructors shall be exclusively, or even 
chiefly, from this class. They hope and trust that pro- 
fessional men of all kinds, that men of letters, that 
students fresh from the Universities, that statesmen and 
divines, will always be found to take part in this educa- 
tion, will always feel that by doing so they are fuliilKng 
their proper tasks, and educating themselves. 

Because this is my conviction, I have ventured to 
speak of this Working College, to an audience of all 
classes except Working Men, gathered together in this 



VI.] THE TEACHEES IX A WOKKING COLLEGE. 191 

West-end of London. I thank you heartily for the 
patience with which you have listened to statements 
which often must have been dry, and to opinions from 
which many of you may have dissented. I believe 
you will be rewarded for that patience, and for greater 
efforts and sacrifices, if you should be led in any way 
to assist in this work, or in such a work as I have 
described to you. We are so convinced of the absolute 
necessity of not making our teaching dependent upon 
public patronage, that we shall not beg help from the 
public. The aid of those who are willing to trust us, 
we shall be thankful to receive, and we think that we 
can] turn it to good account. Those who cannot trust 
us, I would beseech to commence a better enterprise 
themselves. We attach no worth to the particular plan 
which I have sketched out. It is the best we have 
been able to think of in the circumstances in which ^ we 
find ourselves. Another may be far better in other 
circumstances. Ours may be modified, contracted, ex- 
panded to almost any extent. Only, let not any man 
be hindered from doing that which in him lies, by his 
suspicions of other men, — by fancying, rightly or 
wrongly, that what they do must be done feebly or ill. 
To every man, his country, his conscience, God himself, 
is saying, " Work thou while the day lasts, for the night 
is coming when no man can work." 



NOTES. 



NOTE I. P. 1. 

The ' Lectures on Education,' which are spoken of in tlie first 
Lecture of this Course, were published in the vear 1839. They have 
been for some time out of print ; and I do not imagine tliat a new 
edition of them is the least likely to be demanded. When they 
appeared, it seemed to me that two great perils were threateninij 
education. One arose from the notion that the State could educate 
the nation by providing schoolrooms, establishing a system of 
instruction, inducing sects and parties to obey a common rule and 
suppress that which was peculiar to each. The other danger was, 
that the Ecclesiastical body in the country might, either on the 
strength of its ancient position, or of its divine pretensions, or of its 
command over a majority, assert the kind of power which the Jesuit 
body had asserted in former days and continues to assert in our own. 
That power, as I understand it, is a power to rule and govern minds, 
not to awaken and educate them. It is a power which the State has 
a right to dread. It has always interfered, and must always interfere, 
with the power of the magistrate, because it is itself magisterial. 
This, I maintained, was not because the Jesuit was too much of a 
Churchman, but too little, — because he abandoned the function of 
a Churchman, " and became a mischievous Statesman. The true 
Churchman, it was contended, possessed a power of an entirely 
diiferent kind, a power which cooperated with that of the States- 
man, but did not cross it or interfere with it. It was a power over 
the spirits of men and of children, not to keep them down, but to give 
them freedom and expansion; it was an influence to raise men 
above the condition of animals, into the condition of moral and 
responsible beings. It was an influence to raise men out of a 



NOTES. 193 

warring, turbulent, atomic condition, into a social condition. It 
was an influence, therefore, favourable to science, adverse to super- 
stition. It was an influence favourable to national freedom and 
order, adverse to all tlie influences, religious or secular, which 
threatened them. The State, it was affirmed, could not absorb this 
power into itself, could not dispense with it. The State had a right 
to claim that it should be exercised for the good of its subjects ; had 
a right to interfere when those who wielded it were turning it to 
mischief. But the two powers existed distinctly, co-ordinately. 
'No artificial arrangement had called forth either. No conventional 
alliance determined the conditions of their union. Their distinctness 
and their relation to each other, were implied in all the acts and 
thoughts of nations and of individuals. The course of history, not 
our theories and speculations, was to teach us how they were to 
work together or impede each other. 

These Lectures were written to meet a particular set of circum- 
stances which does not now exist. If I spoke my mind freely, 
I should say that the experience of the years which have passed 
since, has been more profitable, — at least in the question of educa- 
tion, — to English Statesmen than to English Churchmen ; that the 
former have shown more humility, more willingness to learn the 
limits of their power from experience and fact, more disposition to 
use it within those limits, than the latter. This is an impression 
which has forced itself upon me very reluctantly, while I have been 
considering the acts of the Committee of Privy Council, and the 
debates which have taken place in the National Society. I do not 
say that we can be satisfied with either. I do not say that we 
could have dispensed with either; not even with the turbulent 
exhibitions which have caused most pain and scandal ; nor yet with 
the third party of dissenting voluntaries. But, on the whole, one 
must acknowledge a more practical purpose, and a more energetic 
action, in those with whom one is inclined to have the least sym- 
pathy. One may dread some of their maxims and some of their 
proceedings ; but it must be chiefly the fault of our own pride or 
ignorance if they do us harm. The Government now recognises 
whatever moral and spiritual power it finds at work in the country, 
and does not pretend to supersede it, or substitute its own for it. 
Every Clergyman, therefore, and every society of Churchmen is 
put upon a trial. If the Churchman knows what moral and spiritual 





194 NOTES. 

power is entrusted to liim, lie can put it forth. If he cares for a 
real authority rather than for the semblance of one ; if he actually 
raises men's spirits instead of boasting of his divine commission to 
raise them ; the State will ask him no questions, will commend what 
it sees he has effected, and will afford to him another kind of aid, 
which he can in general obtain from it at less sacrifice of dignity and 
duty than from the public. 

Eor these reasons, many passages in my former Lectures, though 
I believe they were justified by the occasion which called them forth, 
now strike me as not only obsolete, but painful. There are hopes 
expressed, some of which have been disappointed, suspicions which 
have proved unreasonable. But it is pleasant to feel that there are 
more of the last than of the first. Some individual men, who Avere 
then exercising, as I thought, nobly, the true function of the 
Churchman, have since shown that their idea of it was derived from 
the school of Loyola, and have therefore felt, reasonably and con- 
sistently, that they could only find full scope for it by submitting to 
the Bishop of Eome. A Society which then seemed to be awakening 
into new and vigorous life, now appears likely to sink into premature 
decay and decomposition. But the training-schools in the neigh- 
hourhood of London and throughout England, are doing far more 
than they promised to do. Some of those who contributed most to 
their growth and efBciency, are not less zealous in the cause than 
they were at first, and have had years of sorrow and wisdom to give 
them a deeper understanding of their duties as English and Christian 
men. Some, we have a right to believe, who have passed out of the 
struggles and divisions of this world, are able, with clearer insight 
and higher powers, to work with their friends, tlieir country, and 
the whole Church militant on earth.* On the v.diole, I believe that 
the last fifteen years, though they may have left us more deeply 
conscious than ever we were, of the wants of our population and of 
our own failures, have done more than almost any corresponding 
period in our annals, I might almost say than any half-century, to 
show us what cannot be done and what may be done by English 
Statesmen and Churchmen. 

* One of the most devoted of thera all, G. P. Mathisou, Esq., died after these 
Lectures were delivered. 



KOTES. 195 

Note IL Page 13. 

The passage in Guizot, which refers to the old schools of the 
empire, is in the 4th Lecon of the ' Histoire de la Civilisation en 
Prance/ vol. i. pp. 97—124. 



Note III. Page 16. ^^ 

The passages in Alcuin's Works, which illustrate his method of 
education, are to be found in vol. ii. part 2, pp. 265 — 354. Ed. 
fol. 1777. The notices of him in Guizot, are contained in the 22d 
Legon, vol. ii. pp. 160 — 192. 

The third Lecture in Sir James Stephen's Work, is on the 
character and influence of Charlemagne. 



Note IV. Page 19. 

' A certain Abbot,' writes Eadmer, ' who was esteemed very 

* religious, would often converse with Anselm about the religion 

* of the monastery generally, and especially about the boys that 

* were brought up in the cloister. "What, I pray you, is to be 
' done with them ? They are perverse and incorrigible. Day and 

* night we do not cease beating them, and yet they grow worse 

* and worse." To whom Anselm with some astonishment, " You 

* do not cease to beat them ? And when they are grown up 

* what kind of people are they ? " " Stupid and bestial," was 

* the answer. " What encouragement have you to waste this 

* nourishment of yours," said Anselm, " when the result of it is, 

* that out of men you fashion beasts ? " " But what can' we do ? " 

* asked the Abbot. "We control them in all possible ways that 

* they may turn to good, and we do no good." " My dear Abbot, 

* I beseech you," said Anselm ; "if you were planting the seedling of 

* a tree in your garden, and you were so to shut it up on all sides 

* that it could not send out its branches in any direction, when after 

* certain years you let it loose, what kind of tree do you think would 
' come forth ? I should fancy one with very curved and twisted 

2 



196 NOTES. 

' brauclies. And whose fault would that be but yours who liad 

* confined it so immoderately ? And this is what you are doing with 
' your boys. They have been planted in the garden of the Church, 

* that they may grow and bring forth fruit to God. But you bind 

* them so fast with terrors, threats, and lashes, that they can enjoy 

* no liberty whatsoever. Thus unwisely pressed down, they heap 

* together evil thoughts within them, and cherish and feed upon them, 
' thoughts that are twisted like thorns together, and so sustained 

* by the nourishment which they receive from you, that they resist 

* obstinately whatever might serve for their correction. Since they 
' do not perceive in you anything of love, or gentleness, or beuig- 

* nity towards them, neither have they any belief in any goodness 
' in you, but they suppose that all your plans are so many con- 

* trivances against them, proceeding from envy and hatred. And 

* this miserable result comes to pass, that as their bodies grow, so 

* there grows in them hatred and the suspicion of every kind of evil; 
' their minds become curved and stooping towards all vices. Since 

* they have never been nourished in true charity, they cannot look 
' at any one except with downcast brows and squinting eyes." ' — 
Eacbier's Life, Book I. chap. iv. section 30. See also the following 
section. 

Note Y. Page 21. 

The passages I have quoted from Abelard occur in the celebrated 

* Historia Calamitatum.' — Cousin'' s Edition of his Works, vol. i. p. 3. 



Note YI. Page 26. 

The passages to which I have specially referred in the * Heport of 
the Oxford Commission,' are those which have reference to the 
Colleges generally, beginning at p. 129, and to the accounts of 
University, Balliol, Merton, New College, and Lincoln College, pp. 
185—214. 

My knowledge of William of Wykeham is entirely derived from 
this Report, and from Bishop Lowth's Life. There is a more recent 
work, entitled * William of Wykeham and his Colleges,' by 
Mr. Mackenzie Walcott, London, Nutt, 1852, which contains much 
valuable and interesting information. 



NOTES. 197 



Note VII. Page 34. ' 

My readers are no doubt sufficiently acquainted with Milton's 

* Letter to Mr. Hartlib.' Locke's ' Thoughts concerning Edu- 
catioi],' though they are often quoted, are not, I suspect, much read. 
The passage to which I have referred, in which it is recommended 
that the child's shoes should be so thin that they may leak, and let in 
water whenever he comes near it, occurs near the opening of the 
treatise, and is one of a series of physical instructions which precede 
those that bear upon moral and intellectual discipline. As I have 
quoted in my third Lecture a passage from Milton respecting Music, 
I will give the parallel one from Locke. After strongly recom- 
mending Dancing because ' it gives graceful motions all the life, and 
' above all things manliness and a becoming cou^dence to young 
' children,' he goes on to say, ' Music is thought to have some 
' affinity with dancing, and a good hand upon some instruments is by 
' many people mightily valued. But it wastes so much of a young 

* man's time to gain but a moderate skill in it, and engages often in 

* such odd company, that many think it much better spared. And 
' I have amongst men of parts and business so seldom heard any one 
' commended or esteemed for having an excellency in Music, that 

* amongst all those things that ever come into the list of accomplish- 

* ments, I think I may give it the last place. Our short lives will 
' not serve us for the attainment of all things, nor can our minds 
' be always intent on something to be learnt.' — TForks, vol. iii. p. 91, 
quarto, 1714. 

Note VIII. Page 5i. 

The part of John of Salisbury's Polycraticus which relates to the 
trifles of the Schools, is in lib. vii. c. 12. De ineptiis nugatorum 
qui sapientiam verba putent. 

Note IX. Page 57. 

The extract from Mrs. Jameson is taken from the first volume of 
her ' Memoirs of the Early Italian Painters,' p. 30. 



198 KOTES. 



Note X. Page 81. 
I trust tliPct the papers wliich explain the origin, progress, and 
present working of the Yauxhall experiment are so widely known, 
that any quotations from them would be quite superfluous. A com- 
pany for publishing illustrated books, in which the same enlightened 
maxims are recognised and the same practical plans for the Workmen 
are made legally binding on the shareholders, has, I understand, been 
recently established, and is under tlie direction of one of Mr. Wilson's 
family. 



Note XL Page 98. 

The words which I have used at the close of the third Lecture will 
expose me to the severe censure of a class of men whom I per- 
sonally respect, and who, on many occasions, have shown a practical 
interest in the education of the working classes. In common, 
I believe, with the rest of my clerical brethren, I have been favoured 
with an epistle addressed by the Quaker body to the religious people 
of England on the subject of the war. I am not the least entitled to 
represent the feelings of any one else ; but for myself I do, with all 
gratitude, make answer to that document thus : — Because I accept 
the Bible as the law-book of individuals and of nations ; because 
I believe the interests of humanity and godliness are superior to all 
other interests ; because I hold that principle is never to be sacrificed 
to expediency, and that no plea of necessity can ever justify wrong- 
doing ; therefore do I repudiate that union of Christian and Mam- 
monite maxims which the advocates of peace have been establishing, 
to the great detriment of the education, morality, and well-being of 
the English people ; therefore do I think a war in the support of 
right and justice has been an instrument in God's hands for breaking 
down that unnatural and accursed alliance, and for teaching us that 
w^e cannot bow at once to Him and to His enemy. Whenever the 
Society of Eriends has testified by zeal and sacrifices for the good of 
men, even by acts Mliich in themselves I disapprove, that there is a 
higher standard to which men may be conformed than the selfish 
standard, I believe they have been, in the true sense of the word, 
ministers of peace, helping to remove some of the diseases which 
cause wars, and of which wars are the medicine. Whenever they 



NOTES. 199 

have left on men's minds the fatal impression that mere pln^sical life 
is the most sacred of all things; that money is the measure of 
worth ; that the cliaracter of God is uncertain ; that the principles 
of His old and of His new Covenant are contrary to each other ; 
I hold them to he the ministers of war, the abettors of its worst evils, 
those who teach their countrymen to hail even its direst terrors as 
God's method of savinir us from utter heartlessness and Atheism. 



^^TE Xll. Page 126. 

I have spoken of the new obligations which devolve upon the 
Uaiversity of Oxford, in consequence of the removal, now sanctioned 
by the Legislature, of the subscription to the Articles at Matri- 
culation. As I have defended the principle upon which that sub- 
scription was originally established, maintaining it to be directly 
connected with Education, and not accidentally imposed as a test of 
Church membership, which it is not and never can be — I wish to 
explain myself somewhat more upon this point than I could do in 
Lectures referring to an altogether different subject. I am the more 
desirous to do so, because I believe there is a disposition in some of 
the Colleges to make use of the privilege, which at present they 
undoubtedly possess, of fixing restrictions for their own bodies by 
■which the University as such cannot be bound. Such a course, 
however legally justifiable, is not one which I think can be safely 
adopted by societies desirous to do the work, which their founders 
intended them to do, which God and their country require of them 
in this day. 

I take it for granted that those who would limit the Colleges to 
professed members of the Church of England, dislike strongly, if not 
equally, a purely secular education which shall avoid Theology — and 
therefore some of the deepest questions in humanity — altogether, and 
one which, professing to treat of Religion, strives to make it equally 
agreeable and palatable to all persons of all different opinions, with 
the limitation, possibly, that they must acknowledge a certain, 
respect for Christianity. I heartily sympathise in their objection to 
both these experiments. Though I am quite content that both should 
be made, because I believe that it is only by trial we can ascertain 
how little either is compatible with the frankness and openness 



200 NOTES. 

which is demanded of the teacher, and with the cravings and neces- 
sities which exist in the mind of the pupil, I should mourn greatly 
if our old Colleges, constructed, as I believe they are, on an entirely 
opposite principle, and bound now more than ever to exhibit the 
power of that principle, should desert it for the sake of being thought 
comprehensive or called liberal. But it is a question which I would 
most seriously submit to them, whether they are not in that peril 
already, and whether they in the least escape from it by insisting 
that their classes shall consist only of those who were born within the 
pale of the national Church, or who have entered its pale. Is the 
teacher under no temptation tobe silent altogether respecting Theology, 
or to pare down his statements and expressions upon it, so that he may 
adapt himself to the different habits and complexions of the parties 
or no-party which exist in our own communion ? Suppose he does 
not take this course, but announces with great distinctness and 
vehemence his own conclusions, does not his conscience often hint the 
reproach to him, that he is more of a sectarian than a Churchman, or 
is exalting his own judgment above that of his predecessors or contem- 
poraries ? I do not say that there is no way of escaping from these self- 
accusations as well as from the evil of suppressing his convictions ; 
I am sure that there is, and that an honest and humble man will, 
by some discipline, be enabled to find it ; but I do say that it is 
not his circumstances wiiich point him to it, and that if it pleases 
God to change those circumstances for others, these may have the 
effect of removing some of his confusions, 'not of increasing them. 
The more I have considered the events of our time as divine 
indexes to our conduct, the more it has seemed to me that we 
are driven from our old moorings, not into the open sea, but, 
if we will profit by it, to a more secure anchorage. We cannot 
test men any longer by their own professions, or by our judg- 
ments of them; we must ask the Bible to tell us how God 
regards them, — how they stand in His sight, without reference 
to their false impressions or ours. That is surely a more theo- 
logical point of view than any other. It may be very hard to 
attain it, by reason of our own selfishness or opinionativeness ; 
but it is just that which an English Churchman w^ould wish to 
attain, if he could; it is just that which enables him to prove that 
his Church is not a sect — to use the language of his formularies, 
as if it were intended for human beings. Without binding any to 



KOTES. 201 

adopt these formularies, he may adopt them in his inmost heart, — he 
may carry out the lessons, which they have tauglit him, into his 
words and into his life. There is no need of concealment. The 
dissenters, who put their sons under his care, know what he is; they 
would wish him to be honest. They will probably expect liim to be 
far more dogmatical and exclusive than they will find him to be ; 
they will be surprised at discovering that that is not his temptation, 
that — because he is a Churchman, because he wishes to build up a 
united nation — sectarianism is a greater dread and abomination to 
him in himself than in any one else. I am sure that the writers in 
religious newspapers will say that this is nonsense ; they are bound 
to do so ; they would forget their function if they spoke otherwise. 
But I am not addressing myself to them, but to the Christian 
scholars and gentlemen who take part in the teaching of our English 
Colleges. I know that what I say will commend itself to something 
in their minds and hearts, in spite of any prejudices they may have 
against the utterer. When a man is confident that God is teaching 
these things to his generation, as He has taught them to himself; 
when he is satisfied that they are not the contradiction of that which 
our ancestors believed, but the adaptation of it to new conditions, he 
must be sure that those who need them will receive them in due 
time. Very encouraging proofs liave already been given, that the 
best and most enlightened Colleges in Oxford, if they stumble for a 
moment through a natural desire to maintain their old maxims, will 
not be suffered to ruin their existence and their future usefulness, 
but will be tauglit, even by the rulers of the Church, that they can 
best maintain these ancient principles by frankly confessing their 
new duties. 



Note XIII. Page 129. ' 

It is probable that many of the remarks on the studies of a "Work- 
ing College, which occur in the Fifth Lecture, would have taken a 
somewhat different form, perhaps would have been altered even in 
substance, if they had been written after the work of our College 
commenced. I am very glad that they were not. Oftentimes 
experience shows our ideal to have been wrong. Then it is a 
privilege as well as a duty to correct it ; for to correct is to ennoble 
it. Oftentimes experience shows that there are parts of it which 



202 NOTES. 

cannot be realized at once, which must be modified to suit persons, 
places, and times. To alter the design in conformity to this expe- 
rience, is merely to save ourselves the humiliation which it brings 
with it, to reduce that which is higher and truer within the dimen- 
sions of our own pettiness, to deprive ourselves and others of a 
standard by which we may hope to be raised and reformed. I think 
most persons must have learnt that, if it is not an act merely of 
prudence but of duty to give up the most cherished projects and 
maxims for the sake of getting what you can at the first starting of 
an Institution — it is just as prudent, just as much a duty to keep your 
principles always before you. Occasions will speedily arise which 
will make you feel your need of them, and will force you to apply 
them more severely than you were at first able to do. 



LEOTUEES 



ON 



THE EELiaiON OF KOME, 

AND ITS CONNEXION WITH THE HISTORY OF CHRISTIAN 

CIVILIZATION. 



LECTURE I. 

KG MIC IN ITS YOUTrr. 

• 

Many wlio arc present to-nioLt will rcmcml)cr a pas- 
sa.f^c wliicli occurs near the commencement of Dante's 
' Inferno.' Wlien tlie Poet first liciirs whiilicr Virgil 
is aljout to conduct liim, lie expresses Lis wonder that 
so rare an lionom* sliould 1)C conferred on so mejin a 
person. lie rcmemLers indeed that tliere is a precedent. 
'IMic licro of liis great master's poem was permitted in 
his lifetime to visit the shades helow. iUit it was not 
strange or unnatural that such a privilege should he 
l)estowcd upon il^^neas, heathen though he was, ' Sith 
he ' — so Cary renders the words, — 

* Bitli Lo of Home, Jiiul of Rorne'H cmplro wide, 
111 heaveii'H empyreiil lieight wan clioHcn Hire, 
I'otli wliicli, if tnitli \)(', spoken, were; ordainM, 
And Htaljli.sird for tlie lioly place, wliero sits 
Wlio to great Peter's Hacred scat succeeds." 

This is certainly a singular motto to choose for a 
Course of Lectures to he delivered in the ca})it<il of 
Scotland. Your modern scholars have done as mueli 
as the scholars of any part of Europe to scatter tli(; last 
lingering suspicion that Home derived its origin from 



206 EOME IN ITS YOUTH. [LECT. 

a Trojan colony. Your older heroes have done at least 
as mnch as those of any nation, to show that what Dante 
regarded as the final glory of the great city, for which all 
its sufferings and victories had been preparing, was not 
a desirable consummation for it or for mankind. I cer- 
tainly do not dissent from either of these conclusions. 
Nevertheless, I think there is a principle implied in the 
words of the poet, which is not seriously affected by his 
antiquarian ignorance, or by his ecclesiastical theory. 
That principle, as I understand it, applies to all nations 
wliich have risen from insignificance to greatness, and 
have maintained a memorable position in the annals of 
the world. It assumes that we may trace through all 
these, some great providential purpose, some leading 
character and tendency, signs of which will be apparent 
in the very opening of the history, and will be most 
conspicuous as we approach its catastrophe. The feeling 
of such a purpose imparts to many of the classical 
histories that dramatical unity, which we feel to be a 
compensation for their want of accurate criticism. A 
similar characteristic gives an interest to many of the 
historical works which have been recently produced in 
France, though one has often to lament in them rheto- 
rical exaggerations, and to fear that facts and documents 
have been unconsciously coloured for the sake of effect. 
Something better than the Destiny which the ancient 
as well as the modern annalist recognises as presiding 
over the course of events, — a Will which is compatible 
with freedom, and which awakens it, — may one day, 
I trust, be fiilly confessed by those who write and those 
who read, and may compel them to dread every devia- 



I.] EOME IN ITS YOUTH. 207 

tion from truth as no less* miscliievoiis to the poetical 
consistency of their narrative, than to its moral signi- 
ficance. But such a belief will lead to a more careful 
observation of the course which every nation has pursued 
through the different stages of its infancy and youth 
and manhood, and to an assured conviction that, however 
the design for which it exists may have been perverted 
and concealed by its self-will, that design will not be 
sought in vain by the faithful student, and may be 
fulfilled, within his own sphere, by the faithful citizen. 

While, however, I look upon this doctrine as one of 
the widest application, as one which may be safely 
tested by the annals of England or Scotland or France, 
I cannot help perceiving the most striking illustration 
of it in the case to which Dante referred. The traditions 
respecting ^neas contain, it seems to me, the germ of 
an idea that has been worked out in the records of the 
Popedom. The life and empire of Rome, in all its in- 
termediate periods, exhibits, -I think, the development 
and fructification of this seed, so tliat we cannot under- 
stand the good or the evil which we find at one or another 
moment in those memorable records, if we refuse to 
take notice of it. I do not conceive that any change 
which has taken place in our views respecting Roman 
history, any discovery that we had mistaken legends for 
facts, has robbed us of materials for this investigation, 
or can affect the method of it. Every new light which 
has been thrown upon the character or constitution of 
the people, ought to be, and I believe will prove to be, 
also a light to us in this path. Every hint that has 
been given respecting the value of heroical lays or my- 



208 EOME IN ITS YOUTH. [LECT. 

thological traditions, is of the greatest value to liim wlio 
is endeavouring to look upon the story as a whole, not 
merely as a collection of fragments. At the same time 
there will be, I suspect, a great satisfaction in finding 
that the interest which our fathers took in Roman his- 
tory — the influence which it exercised upon their charac- 
ters and their lives — was not derived from a spurious 
source, was not the consequence of their mistakes or their 
credulity, but was the fruit of a genuine instinct which 
led them to perceive a truth and a sequence in the 
narrative, that no increased knowledge respecting its 
details can excuse the men of tliis day for forgetting. 

This last consideration will, I hope, acquit me of the 
extreme presumption which may at first seem to be 
involved in the task I have undertaken. I shall have 
need enough of your indulgence, while I am skimming 
hastily over a ground with the steps of which many of 
you will be familiar, about the objects and views in 
w^hich many of you will have forgotten more than I have 
ever learnt. But if you fancy that it is necessary for 
my purpose that I should lead you, or should be capable 
of leading you, into any profound historical or philolo- 
gical inquiries, you are mistaken. I rejoice to think, as 
I have said already, that no remarks which I shall make 
can diminish your interest in those inquiries. But my 
proper business will be wdtli commonplaces which the 
most superficial readers are acquainted with. I would 
wish you to consider what is implied in facts which are so 
well known to us that we scarcely suppose anything is 
implied in them, in traditions which we fancy are parts 
of a school-boy lore tliat men have left a long way 



I.] ROME IN ITS YOUTH. 209 

beliind them. I believe the benefit, in a refined and 
cultivated society, in an advanced period of civilization, 
of recurring to these old thoughts, of questioning them 
and dwelling upon them, is more than we are any of us 
aware of. Distant periods of our own lives are brought 
together. The fresh life of the boy is strengthened 
with the experience of the man, and imparts more than 
it receives. The periods of the world's life are in like 
manner brought nearer to each other, and we understand 
how identical the laws which govern the progress and 
changes of the species are with those which we trace in 
the individual. 

But there are some reasons which incline me to think 
that such studies, especially when they relate to Roman 
history and to Koman faith, are peculiarly demanded in 
our day. Every one must be aware in himself of a 
certain vagueness and perplexity when he contemplates 
the influence of Eome on the destinies of mankind. 
What is this gigantic fatal power, so unlike that which 
we observe in the empires of the East, — not denoted by 
a few sweeping conquests, — not raising huge walls and 
palaces and temples, that vanish out of sight and after 
a number of ages give back a fev/ scattered memorials 
of themselves to new races which have forgotten them, — 
but which rises quietly and majestically, winning mira- 
culous victories by steady foresight and intelligible 
means ; amidst all changes of time and circumstance 
preserving not merely an identity of name, but of es- 
sence ; never perishing in one form till it has left an 
heir of its greatness ; in its ruins discovering that skill 
and energy which the nations of the western world 

p 



210 KOME IN ITS YOUTH. [LECT. 

confess to liave been at work in the formation of their 
own habits and institutions? The transitory rule of 
some dynasty, or of some nation that has trampled 
others down, we can describe as a necessary visitation, 
as a scourge for the cure of internal evils. But so 
permanent a dominion as this, adapting itself to such 
a variety of conditions, and preserving so strange a 
imiformity, what does it denote ? At one moment we 
are ready to hail it as a great instrument of civilization ; 
there has been surely a beneficent design in all its 
growth and continuance. Then our thoughts are recalled 
to the portentous crimes that marked the acquisition of 
this power, and the exercise of it ; crimes which we can 
limit to no period, of which the Eepublic furnished 
examples as startling as the Empire ; and which we want 
no other testimonies than those of the historians, poets, 
divines, of the Middle Ages, to prove were not less when 
the city of the Caesars had been changed into the 
spiritual capital of Christendom. Must we accept the 
most horrible of all conclusions, — that the course of the 
world has been under the dominion of some daemon, by 
whom occasional good is permitted, only to make the 
evil system he has ordained more conspicuous and more 
inevitable ? 

I think the conscience of mankind could better ward 
off this frightful hypothesis, if another thought still 
more perplexing, or rather a legion of thoughts with a 
specially tremendous one at their head, did not come in 
to strengthen the worse reason and make it appear the 
better. There can be no doubt that the religion of old 
Home was bound up with its very life, impregnated all 



I.] EOME IX ITS YOUTH. 211 

its institutions, was a principal cause of its consistency 
and of its endurance. This fact is obvious to the most 
careless thinker; the most accomplished students saj 
that it seems more important to them the further 
they have pursued their researches. But was not this 
religion in its essence false and evil? Must not any 
polity which was derived from it, have been necessarily 
like its parent? Must not all greatness which it sus- 
tained have been accursed and destructive ? These are 
startling and agitating questions. Intelligent men, sin- 
cere students of history, have sometimes made them 
more painful still by the answers which they have given 
to them. One will tell us, that E-omans did noble deeds, 
and exhibited a noble character, so long as they believed 
that which was utterly fictitious ; but that the moment 
they saw things as they were, and therefore understood 
their faith to be folly, they became heartless and base, 
eager to be tyrants, ready to be slaves. A statement of 
a precisely opposite character to this sounds at first 
even more astonishing and alarming, both from its own 
nature, and from the character and authority of the 
speaker. I^iebuhr, in a letter written to Savigiiy from 
Borne, in 1818, after lamenting the falsehood and the 
infidelity of the people whom he saw about him, ob- 
serves, ' All this seems the strangest thing to me, when 
' one looks back to the old Eomans, who were governed 
^ by a religion of the strictest veracity, fidelity, and 
^ honesty. If it should ever be in my power to continue 

* my history, I shall venture to demonstrate how this 

* religion, which was something quite different from 
^ Stoicism, was the foimdation on which the greatness of 

p 2 



212 KOME IN ITS YOUTH. [lECT. 

* the old repiiHlcan time was reared, and how the whole 
^ life of the constitution depended on it.' 

So remarkable an utterance as this, may well make us 
pause. There are parts of the religion of the old Romans, 
not when corrupted, but, so far as we can tell, as it 
existed from the first, which no authority in the world, 
not even Niebuhr's, can force us to think either veracious 
or honest. Nevertheless, a man so truthful in his own 
character, and so impatient of the absence of truth 
either in criticism or in life, writing with an unparalleled 
knowledge of the subject, to a man better able than 
almost any to judge of the soundness of his opinion, 
would scarcely have ventured such a statement as this 
without having some grounds for it which deserve the 
most earnest attention. One is not bound to make him 
an offender for a word. The familiarity of a letter, and 
the capacity of his correspondent, are an excuse for 
ellipses which in a book addressed to the public he 
Tv'Ould have been bound to fill up. Still, unless we 
inquire carefully what the veracious and honest element 
of the religion was to which he attributes such great 
effects, we shall certainly be likely to gather from his 
dictum an excuse for that which he would have most 
abhorred — for insincerity or for want of faith. 

I think I shall be treating this subject most fairly, if 
I do not begin from the Religion or ^lythology of the 
Romans, but rather from some part of their habits and 
political constitution, which we confess, with little dis- 
sension, to be characteristic and national. I shall not 
stop to prove that one of these is the power which the 
Roman father exercised over his child. This power is 



I.] EOME IN ITS YOUTH. 213 

connected witli all the stones wliicli have made the 
deepest impression upon our childhood, with those which 
we wondered and trembled at ; which assured us that 
we were reading of an orderly, and therefore a most 
mighty race. The questions which these stories excited 
in us were not always pleasant. Were the actors in them 
to he reverenced or hated? were they entirely right, 
or utterly wrong ? But they did not suggest the least 
thought of cruelty ; rather of fixed purpose, controlling 
affections that certainly existed, that were, perhaps, 
unusually strong. These childish feelings, instead of 
"being corrected by subsequent study, are always gaining 
strength. When we begin to hear a little of Eoman 
law, maxims respecting the power of the father, titles 
and institutions grounded upon it, meet us at every turn. 
We have struck against a gnarled and fibrous root, 
which is spreading itself out in all directions. Natural 
Fatherhood suggests the thought of Adoption. It seems 
as if the relation had a power of multiplying itself in- 
definitely. Then come in the different forms of eman- 
cipation. The whole doctrine of citizenship, when it is 
latent, when it is complete and acknowledged, is involved 
with these paternal rights. 

These are loose hasty observations which every one 
makes. We are suspicious of them, because they 
are so obvious. If we could sit at the feet of some 
great jurist, he would, perhaps, explain to us that all 
these are but the accidents and circumstances of the 
history ; that there are certain deeper principles in the 
constitution to which they may be referred. M. Savigny, 
Niebuhr's correspondent, is as high an authority as we 



214 EOME IN ITS YOUTH. [LECT. 

can appeal to upon the subject. No one has more 
extensive knowledge of it in all its bearings ; he ap- 
proaches it with the earnestness of a citizen, and with 
the impartiality of a scholar. The object he proposes 
to himself necessarily leads him to view the history 
from its legal side ; he will therefore warn us of any 
fancies we may fall into, that there is something older 
and deeper than Law. Such would be his inclination. 
But the fact is, that this authority of the Father seems 
to him so original, so fundamental, a fact of Roman 
existence, that he departs from his proper functions for 
the sake of doing homage to it. Strictly speaking, a 
jurist Avould treat all branches of law as comprehended 
imder Obligations ; he would not admit any thing to be 
within his province which could not, in some manner^ 
be referred to that head. But M. Savigny says in terms 
that the Roman jurist cannot adhere to this rule. He 
must recognise the Family principle as antecedent to 
all formal obligations, as implied in them. He cannot 
advance a step, if he is not willing to make this sacrifice 
of systematic consistency to undoubted fact. 

The first impression which this power made Avas, I 
said, somewhat confused ; the second may be positively 
painful. The dominion of the Father over the life of his 
son, together with the fact that the son for many years 
was under conditions similar to those of the slave, sug- 
gests the thought that the whole scheme of existence 
was a vast tyranny, out of which individual existence 
and responsibility can only by slow degrees have 
emerged. Such representations have been made by 
eminent moralists and commentators on history. The 



I.] ROME IN ITS YOUTH. 215 

slave, it Las "been said, was one of liis master's posses- 
sions ; tlie son was scarcely distinguishable from liim. 
The Family consisted of both. Does not this prove 
that in our sense of the word the Family had no exist- 
ence ; that the head was an owner or proprietor merely ; 
that Law and Government, if indeed they shaped 
themselves in conformity with this idea, must have 
overlooked Persons altogether, must have contemplated 
only those rights which have reference to Things ? 

There is great plausibility in this statement. There 
is so far a truth in it, that Rome had certainly from the 
first the capacity of becoming a state in which the life 
of the citizen, the life of the man, was unrecognised, 
was impossible. That a time arrived when this capacity 
was turned into full and frightful reality, all admit ; that 
is what we mean when we speak of imperial despotism ; 
it is of this that we trace the workings in the decline 
and fall of Roman greatness. It is right and important 
that the historian should not ascribe these to accidents 
occurring at a particular period, or to some external 
impact ; that he should seek for the seeds of them in the 
earliest periods. But what was it that the despotism 
subverted ? what was it that declined and fell ? We 
want an answer to this question. A true consideration 
of the Roman doctrine and practice respecting the 
parental and filial relation, I think, leads to the most 
satisfactory answer we can obtain. This doctrine and 
practice were not grounded upon the confusion of things 
with persons, of human beings with property. They 
were tlie great protests in the ancient Pagan world 
against that confusion ; the great indication and assertion 



216 EOME IN ITS YOUTH. [leCT. 

of the eternal Law, wliicli that confusion disturbs and 
violates . The mere title of a man to certain material 
possessions could never become the first subject of a 
law which derived its form and its life from the authority 
of the parent; so long as that authority continued to be 
the fundamental article of the popular belief, the ten- 
dency to look at possession as the capital distinction 
and characteristic of a human being always encountered 
the most vigorous and practical counteraction. Nay 
more ; there was involved in that idea of the Family, 
as containing within it both the Son and the slave, not 
the degradation of the first, but the elevation of tlie 
second ; not the reducing of the heir into a chattel, but the 
acknowledgment of the captive in war, the purchasable 
article, as having the capacities of a citizen and a human 
being. If the Son must be emancipated at a certain 
stage of his life, that he might exercise the powers and 
fulfil the duties which were always latent in him, which 
his name and position implied, — the slave might share 
a similar emancipation ; there was nothing in his nature 
or temporary position, to hinder him from eventually 
wielding the same powers, fulfilling the same duties. 

Thus there was in the heart of this commonwealth, 
embedded in its jurisprudence, worked into the very 
habits of its citizens, a principle which asserted the 
highest Government to be connected with a human 
relationship, to be derived out of it. Power was not 
controlled by certain artificial checks, by the assertion 
of certain rights in the subjects of it ; not even by an 
occasional play of the afi'ections. The sternest, strongest 
power was that which was found established among 



I.] EOME IN ITS YOUTH. 217 

men by tlic conditions of tlieir Ibirtli ; that power com- 
pelled liim wlio exercised it, to regard tlie subject of it 
as having a nature like his own. It involved that rever- 
ence for persons, that tacit acknowledgment of person- 
ality w^ien it was unable to assert itself, when other 
motives urged to the utter denial of it, in which we 
may trace the germ of all later experiments to vindi- 
cate for the serf, moral, social, human rights. 

I am especially anxious that you should perceive 
that I am not selecting a particular title of Roman law, 
or a particular experience of Roman life, because it is one 
for which I may have conceived some private sympathy ; 
but that I am at least trying to discover the most 
radical, permanent principle of the greatness of the 
state, and of its citizens. I do not suppose that when it 
is fully stated, any one will differ widely with me in my 
opinion. But we need to state it, and to connect it with 
a number of facts and traditions which are floating in 
our minds, in order that wq may appreciate it ; and, 
above all, that we may see how it bears upon the proper 
subject of this Lecture. We are liable to adopt two 
opinions, each of which will, I think, lead us astray. 
One is, that the Roman feeling, as I have described 
it, because it touches so closely upon common human 
feelings, is not distinctive of the nation ; the other is, 
that it may be sufficiently accounted for, and that it was 
merely kept alive, by certain accidental circumstances, 
and by the force of laws and institutions. I will touch 
upon both these points before I proceed further. 

We cannot better understand in what sense the acknow- 
ledgment of fatherly power and the incidents that arose 



218 EOME IN ITS YOUTH. [lECT. 

out of it, belonged to Rome, tlian "by comparing its state 
for a moment with that of the Oriental monarchies 
and of the Grecian republics. ]S[o doubt a patriarchal 
principle was latent in all the despotisms of the East : 
it is to them that the modern admirers of what they call 
patriarchal governments turn, with a scarcely dissembled 
affection. "Whatever occasional abuses they may dis- 
cover in the administration of the power, the maxim on 
which it proceeded was, they affirm, more favourable 
than any other to liuman happiness. I do not mean to 
argue the point. What I wish is, to ascertain wherein 
tins patriarchal principle differs from the one which we 
find penetrating the Latin life and character. In the 
passage to which I referred just now, Savigny says, in 
answering a charge of Hegel and of Adam Miiller, 
that naked despotism was implied in the fatherly 
authority : ' These writers have not taken this point 

* into account, that among no people of the old world 
' were wives so highly honoured as in Rome.' And he 
quotes from Columella what he calls — and I think we 
shall none of us disagree with him — this beautiful 
description of the family life of the older times : ' There 

* was then the highest reverence, joined with concord 
' and with industry ; there was no division of interests 

* to be seen in the house ; nothing which the husband or 
' the wife claimed to belong to either of their own riglit : 

* all was looked upon as common to both.' 

Compare a state of things where even the conception 
of such a life as this was possible, let the realization of 
it have been as imperfect as it might, with that which 
must exist wherever polygamy prevails, wherever the 



I.] EOME IN ITS YOUTH. 219 

monarch, the father of the people, cL^ims specially in 
virtue of his dignity to be surrounded with a seraglio ; 
and then estimate, if you can, how these ideas must 
have affected all the parts of a society in which they 
respectively prevailed; how the spirit of relationship, 
of a community of interests united with a distinctness of 
persons, must have diffused itself through all the orders 
and institutions of the one state; how entirely the 
monarch himself must have been the embodiment of 
the principle of fatherhood and government in the other 
case, whilst all occupations and duties will have been 
merely services prescribed by the one central authority, 
and rendered to it. Or have I not unawares, and almost 
of necessity, fallen into a wrong mode of speaking? 
Ought I not rather to have said that the very idea of 
orders and institutions belongs to the one principle and 
has been developed out of it, and that if the eastern 
maxim is at the foundation of the society, and not 
merely, as it was in the case of the Jews, a temporary 
accident and outgrowth, there can be no orders or insti- 
tutions at all? Despotism, in that sense in which it 
soon becomes identical with mere dominion over things, 
in which every minister of the State is only an agent to 
extract certain revenues from other less responsible 
agents, is ultimately its only possible condition. 

The point to which I have drawn your attention in 
this comparison is this, — that the patriarchal character 
in the case of the eastern monarch attaches to him as a 
monarch, — that he is the king first, then the father; 
whereas the idea of fatherhood was the primary one in 
the Italian people, and might or might not connect 



220 ROME IN ITS YOUTH. [LECT. 

itself witli tlie person of any sovereign. This remark 
bears especially upon the early period of the Roman 
State ; upon that kingly period, many of the traditions 
of which we have ceased to believe, but the existence of 
which is not disputed. It was most natural that the 
fatherly authority should be first exhibited in actual 
rulers, and that when any one of these clearly proved 
that he was not a father, but a tyrant, the principle should 
have had strength to break loose from its temporary 
representative, to manifest itself through old forms and 
names which had become sacred, to discover new ways 
of securing reverence and obedience. Scipio, in Cicero's 
* Dialogue on the Republic,' to which I may refer for 
another purpose in a future Lecture, dwells much on the 
continuance of the kingly idea in the general of the 
camp, and in the dictator who was appointed in civil 
emergencies : at the same time he expresses the intensest 
horror of tyranny, and his profound reverence for every 
one who had helped to deliver the country from it, or to 
prevent its restoration. Niebuhr supposes that this 
Dialogue was written wdth especial reference to Cicero's 
times, to prepare the way for the government of one man, 
which he saw to be inevitable. Whether it was so or 
not, the doctrine of the book clearly is, that there is an 
aspect of monarchy which might be tolerable to a 
Roman, one which would embody, not contradict, 
the principle that had been recognised in all periods of 
the Republic. 

If this was the practical faith of the Roman, we may 
understand how much he differed from a lively and 
enterprising citizen of a Greek republic, whose mind 



I.] ROME IN ITS YOUTH. 221 

was full of schemes of government, and wlio liad had 
so much experience of the working of a great many. 
I shall have to compare the general habits of the two 
people more at large in the next Lecture : I would only 
draw your attention now to one point ; I mean the 
striking contrast which the struggles of the aristocratical 
and democratical parties in Sparta and Athens present 
to the struggles of the patricians and plebeians in 
Rome. It is not at all strange, that they have often 
been confounded. There is such a genuine pleasure in 
detecting likenesses, after the manner of Plutarch, 
between men and nations, and there is such a radical 
likeness between them beneath all their diversities, that 
we are constantly tempted to seek for it where it is not 
to be found. If we adopt Niebuhr's doctrine, which, 
I suppose, may be considered as thoroughly established, 
that the patricians were the original Koman houses, we 
see at once how little the struQ-Q-ks of one set of men to 
prevent the expansion of the rights of citizenship, and of 
another to vindicate for themselves rights which they had 
valour and wisdom to exercise, can have resembled the 
question whether the government of the best or the 
government of the people was to be preferred, with 
the further questions which arose out of those, who 
were the best and who were the people. It is not 
necessary to decide, which kind of inquiries was the 
most interesting. If either had been wanting, there 
would have been a great blank in the experience of 
mankind. But we may say confidently, that so far as 
government and authority over men are concerned, it 
was desirable, it was inevitable, that they should be 



222 EOME IN ITS YOUTH. [lECT. 

"bestowed, not upon those who were always considering 
where power did reside or ought to reside, but upon 
those who perceived in the very constitution of man an 
answer to these questions, and who acted on that con- 
viction. Those who sat in the Senate consulted what 
was to be done and how it was to be done, as much as 
any Greek assembly could do ; but it was as fathers 
they consulted. In that name they decreed; by that 
name they were appealed to. So long and so long only 
as they could preserve the dignity and sacredness which 
belong to that name, could they preserve the authority 
of their order. No old titles, no exclusion and con- 
tempt of others, could secure more than the shadow of 
their reverence, when the human family associations 
which attached themselves to the name had passed 
away ; when they sat merely to carry out the purposes 
of some faction, or to register the edicts of an emperor. 

I think then that I may assume this belief in the 
authority of Fathers to be distinctively Roman. I 
do not therefore quarrel with the assertion that it is 
common and human. The peculiar circumstances of 
climate, soil, position, which we find in one city, and not 
in another, deserve assuredly the most careful obser- 
vation. They help us to understand what its work is 
in the world. But the most accurate knowledge of the 
external condition of a nation will not tell us what it is, 
or wherein its power has consisted. To arrive at any safe 
conclusion on these questions, you must know what side 
of human life it has taken the strongest hold of, which 
of those radical principles that belong to us as members 
of a species, have possessed and penetrated it most. It 



I.] EOME IN ITS YOUTH. 223 

is no paradox then to say tliat tlie peculiarity of a 
great people must Ibe something which is not confined 
to it, but is universal. It is no strange assertion, that 
ilome could not have been raised above the rest of the 
earth, could not have had its dominion over men, 
except in virtue of some quality which every man 
might recognise as his own. Other people may have 
had all the same external advantages, or immeasurably 
greater. The power of turning them to account, of 
subjecting them to its commands, of converting them 
from impediments into tools, is what we require ; and 
this power must come from some other source than from 
the things which it is to make use of; if it wants 
support we must look elsewhere than to these to 
uphold it. 

There can be no question, from what I have said, that 
the Roman reverence for parents did need support ; that 
it was exposed to continual perils from within and with- 
out. The perils were great in the outset of the history. 
The early legends represent to us the founders of the 
city, as men willing to adopt all plans for carrying out 
their purpose, getting wives as they could from the 
neighbouring lands, by fair means or foul. Such sto- 
ries, to whatever precise events they may point, are 
faithful indications of character ; they show us the rough 
hands which have begun great empires ; they scatter 
all dreams of an Arcadian age. In Roman history we 
have scarcely the hint of such an age ; we find our- 
selves involved, at once, in the habits and the crimes of 
an organized society. So much the more do we want 
to know how it came to be organized, what held the 



224 ROME IN ITS YOUTH. [lECT. 

elements together that were so likely to burst asunder, 
what gave them the sense of obedience, since we cannot, 
in this case at least, attribute it to the weariness of 
fighting : no men were ever less weary of it ; they 
longed for it ; they were entering upon a life of it. 
The difficulty becomes greater as we proceed. The city 
grows more firm and compact : but with this growth its 
internal struggles become severer ; it seems continually 
as if the body would be actually rent asunder. The 
strifes of orders must have afiected the private life of tlie 
citizens, must have disturbed their hearths and homes. 
External wars, and conquests, the prizes to avarice, the 
excitements to ambition, must have been felt by every 
E-oman son, must have tempted him continually to break 
loose from the authority of the Father. Laws were 
themselves affected by all the causes that affected the 
manners of the people ; their inadequacy to preserve 
manners was proved at last, was confessed always. 
Who will guard the guardians ? who will teach us to 
honour that which in itself is weak, while we are strong? 
This was the problem which all earnest citizens and 
statesmen had to work out. If they thought they could 
solve it by their sage maxims and skilful contrivances, 
the passions in the hearts, the strength in the arms of 
those whom they ruled, defied and mocked them. The 
helmsman who depended upon his tricks and con- 
trivances for keeping the sea in order, had to find that 
there is another law governing it which he must learn, 
to which he must submit, which he cannot alter. The 
manliness and wisdom of the Roman consisted chiefly 
in that he understood this truth better than most 



I.] EOME IN ITS YOUTH. 225 

men ; lie trusted less to his sagacity and more to facts ; 
he perceived that he could only govern by consenting 
to be governed. Yet he was prone, as all are, to forget 
this principle ; then it proved its strength by his dis- 
comliture. 

I have been brought, then, to the direct subject of 
my Lecture. Some influence was needful to maintain 
this paternal authority, — customs, laws, sagacity, were 
not adequate for the purpose. Shall we say that the 
Roman Religion supplied that want which nothing else 
could supply ? If I put forth this proposition, I might 
procure an easy assent to it. A hundred facts would 
immediately come in to support it — the mixture of civil 
and sacred names in the offices of the state ; the attention 
to sacrifices ; the whole science of divination and augury. 
It might be shown, clearly enough, and Polybius would 
support the evidence with his authority, that what are" 
called religious sanctions had far more weight with the 
Romans than with the Greeks, or any people of the old 
world; that they trembled far more to violate an oath 
which the name of the gods had confirmed. And hence 
it would be easy to draw the inference that a machinery 
which kept them continually alive to the punishments 
which might be inflicted on them here or hereafter, if 
they were guilty of crimes, operated on their consciences 
or their fears with a strength which we cannot in the 
least measure. 

Unfortunately the facts are conclusive — facts to which 
I must draw your attention more carefully on another 
occasion — that when the machinery was most perfect, 
when it was recognised as having this object among all 

Q 



226 EOME IN ITS YOUTH. [LEGT. 

who took part in tlie working of it, it did not avail to 
check the most enormous and deliberate crimes. But 
supposing there was a moment, a transition period hard 
to discover, when the balance, strongly inclining to- 
wards evil, was adjusted simply by the threatenings 
of what the Gods might inflict upon the wrong doer, — 
supposing the pious frauds to which the priests resorted 
for the purpose of strengthening the popular fears were 
oiot a weight in the other scale, — can it be shown that, at 
any time whatsoever, that fellowship of the husband and 
the wife, that reciprocal government and obedience of 
the father and the child, which the old agricultural writer 
dwells on so fondly, grew and expanded under this 
shadow? Can it be shown, or in the least degree 
presumed, that the Koman hosts in the old time went 
forth to throw their lives away for their country's sake, 
because they had a dim apprehension that he who dwelt 
and ruled in the Capitol, might do them some greater 
mischief than the general who led them, or than the 
enemy if they fell into his hands? Was this the 
kind of motive to create orderly discipline, or to inspire 
deeds of daring and devotion? If the religion of the 
Romans was nothing else than this, it certainly does 
not in the least help us to account for the virtues either 
of the hearth or of the camp ; still less does it teach us 
to' connect them together, or show how the one might 
animate and sustain the other. 

But if this account of the matter is unsatisfactory, 
there is another v^hich is sometimes given, and which 
has acquired considerable popularity in our day, that 
seems, in this instance at all events, even less tenable. 



4 



I.] ROME IN ITS YOUTH. 227 

The religions impulse is said to be that which creates 
in men high ideas of the beautiful and the good, which 
raises the nobler thoughts they find in themselves to 
their highest power, which invests them with divinity, 
which enthrones them amidst the stars. What warrant 
the history and mythology of the Greeks afford for 
this kind of statement, — how easy it is for a person 
who contemplates their history apart from the history 
of mankind, or who thinks that it is the key to every 
other, to regard this view as the solution of all dif- 
ficulties, — I can readily admit. What I would observe 
here is, that the Eomans Vv^ere, as we all know, not 
an ideal people ; that they were eminently and charac- 
teristically the reverse of this ; that they never could 
reverence anything which they believed had proceeded 
from them, had been fashioned by them ; that nothing 
illustrates this feeling so strongly as their reverence for 
the authority of Fathers, as their conviction that this was- 
the foundation of all other authority. The moment any 
Homan began to suspect that there was nothing but w^hat 
he had projected from himself, that moment this re- 
verence fell by its own weight. To seek for the protec- 
tion of it in such a religion as this, would be the most 
flagrant of all possible inconsistencies. 

But if we throw aside these theories and look at the 
facts of the case, what do we find ? Be it remembered, 
that, for this purpose, traditions which took any strong 
hold of the popular mind, are facts. They are facts of 
belief, though not facts of history. They may explain 
to us what was recognised in the invisible world, 
though they may give only a confused impression of 

q2 



228 ROME IN ITS YOUTH. [lECT. 

what took place in tlie visible. Witli tliis recollection 
on your minds, consider that story to which I referred at 
the outset, the story which Virgil, who had been bred 
in the simplicity of Italian rustic life, who was sur- 
rounded by the splendours of the new court, who was 
a Roman at heart though his intellect had been cast 
into a Greek mould, felt to be the most faithful em- 
bodiment of that old truth which he trusted that the 
anarchy of the civil wars had not been able entirely to 
destroy, which he fondly dreamed that the new dynasty 
might restore. Forget, as we are privileged to do, all 
about a Trojan colony and a Trojan war, all that merely 
belonged to the vanity of the Julian family, the want of 
documents, the carelessness of investigation, and then 
consider what is implied in the story of a man bearing 
his father out of the ruins of a fallen city, and coming 
to Latium after perils by sea and land, with liis house- 
hold gods. Consider those words Household Gods in 
this connexion, and then ask yourselves whether this is 
a mere tale, illustrating the dry moral, that it is proper 
for sons to take care of their fathers, or whether it does • 
not give us a glimpse into the meaning of the reverence 
for fathers, of the authority of fathers, — whether it does 
not tell us whence that reverence and authority were 
derived, how they were sustained. Was there not a 
belief in the Roman such as did not dwell in any other 
Pagan nation, that there was a fatherly government in 
the highest region of all, which was implied in the very 
existence of the household, upon which the permanence 
of all household relations depended, upon which therefore 
all civil relations, all civil order, and not less the mili- 



I.] EOME IN ITS YOUTH. ^229 

taiy order, the aiitliority and subjection of the camp, 
nlthnately depended ? 

I do not assume the opinion of some very eminent 
scholars to be established, that the Penates were really 
the gods of the Roman State, that Jupiter himself was 
one of them. Though I feel that that must be sub- 
stantially a correct statement, I do not wish to build 
anything upon it, seeing that the inference one would 
deduce from it follows as clearly from premises whicli 
all admit. And while I would maintain the resemblance 
of the powers which presided over the state with 
those wliich presided over the hearth, I would not 
lose sight of the fact that they retained their own dis- 
tinctness, that the Roman family was never merged in 
the State as the Spartan was, that the safety of the 
State and the freedom of its individual members de- 
pended upon the acknowledgment of a number of 
circles, each having its own centre within the great 
circle. Where the highest idea of the divine Unity 
is not recognised, where different powers are supposed 
to exercise distinct functions in nature, or to demand 
homage from some special faculty or disposition in 
man, there I cannot conceive that the home and the 
country will not be felt to be in some degree under 
different government ; that there will not, at all events, 
have been frequent clashing of the affections and the 
understanding, in the effort to regard them as the same. 
If we contemplate these facts in the light of history and 
of our own experience, I think we shall be less sur- 
prised at the differences and perplexities of scholars 
upon this point, than at the efforts after unity, the 



230 EOME IN ITS YOUTH. [LECT. 

intuition of it wliicli one sees in this people, just so far 
as they connected the objects of their worship with the 
family and with the nation. The moment they lost 
that association, the moment they contemplated their 
Gods merely as presiding divinities in nature, as asso- 
ciated with all the vicissitudes of climate, with aspects 
of the country, with strange and startling phenomena, 
that moment they became Polytheists in the most 
radical sense of the word. A pantheon so formed could 
have no limitations. Each new observation, each new 
conquest, would people it afresh. And at each step the 
feeling of that which had been originally implied in 
the worship would grow weaker ; some utterly frivolous 
or utterly cowardly feeling would be substituted for it. 

To affirm that there was any time when the people of 
Rome were free from this kind of polytheism, or when 
it did not determine many of their acts, would be to 
contradict the plainest evidence. But it would be 
equally, I think, against evidence to say that there ever 
was a time, when there was not a sense of something 
deeper than this, when a divine fatherhood did not make 
itself manifest to them as the object of their confidence 
and their devotion through the different objects which 
were reverenced at the private or the public altar. It 
did not signify whence the rites of the particular divinity 
might be imported, from what language the name might 
come, — so sure as they were adopted by the Eoman of 
the older time, he saw in them that which did not 
belong to flowers and seeds and agriculture firstly or 
chiefly, that which did belong to the family and upheld 
it. Take a very simple instance which will illustrate 



l] eome in its youth. 231 

this remark by sliowing in* what way it became for- 
gotten in later times. Ovid, we all know, undertook to 
be the commentator npon his country's religion. If 
mere cleverness and liveliness, a knowledge of old fables, 
and a power of presenting them in an agreeable form, 
had been sufficient qualifications for this task, no one 
was fitter for it than he was. The only thing which he 
wanted was any, the slightest, appreliension of that 
which constituted the dignity of the Roman, the 
citizen, or the man. For a right treatment of his 
subject, no point was so important as the worship of 
Vesta or Hestia. All the most sacred ceremonies and 
institutions of Rome were associated with it; the 
virgins of tlie sacred fire had aifected the character of 
the nation from its infancy. The fop and sentimen- 
talist of the Augustan age approaches the topic with 
the jaunty air, which is so characteristic of him and so 
intensely disagreeable. He informs us that Vesta means 
the Earth. He confesses that he had been entirely igno- 
rant till a very recent time of the fact that there was no 
image of Vesta; that her fire was her only symbol. 
He then proceeds to tell a vulgar and impure story, by 
way of illustrating that which had conveyed to his 
fathers the feeling that purity was implied in the very 
existence of the home and the hearth. I have more 
than one reason for alluding to this perversion. In 
England — I hope it is otherwise in Scotland — Ovid is the 
writer from wliom our boys commonly derive their first 
impressions of what was believed in the old world, and 
especially by the conquerors of it. He is chosen partly, 
I suppose, because the art of writing longs and shorts 



232 EOME IN ITS YOUTH. [LECT. 

may "be learnt most easily from liim ; partly Lecause it 
is tliouglit that the form under Avhich he presents the 
Pagan Mythology must show how ridiculous and false 
it was. What sacrifices ought to he made for the first 
end, I do not venture to pronounce ; the theological 
calculation I must maintain is utterly false. What 
such a writer as Ovid teaches us is not to despise and 
abjure that which is fiibulous and mythological, but to 
lose all perception of that in the fables and mythology 
which was bearing witness for truth. To him the 
religion of liis country was a stuff out of which he 
could make verses just as he could make others out of 
his own sorrows ; therefore wliilc we read him, we 
lose all power of perceiving how it took hold of men's 
hearts. We suppose that somehow certain fictions 
were credited by the old world, Avhich have bequeathed 
a set of metaphors for schoolboys. And so we are not 
the least prepared to watch the tendencies in our minds 
out of which the worst of these fictions proceeded, or to 
reclaim from them that which was in them, not of 
them, — that which came from a higher source, and was 
to manifest its might when Paganism had proved its 
weakness and had perished. 

Vesta, we may say it boldly, not caring the least for 
Ovid's dictum, did not mean the Earth to an old l\oman, 
whatever she may have meant to the Greeks. Nor did 
her fire associate itself in his mind with physical powers 
and principles, about which lie knew notliing and 
speculated very little. It spoke to his heart, not his 
understanding, of that which was nearest and dearest. 
It connected the sanctity and affection of the Home 



I.] ROME IN ITS YOUTH. 233 

with tlie preservation of the City. It revealed how 
little one could be preserved without the other. It told 
him what need there was of a divine vigilance to keep 
that alive, which a multitude of cold blasts were ever 
threatening to put out. Such thoughts might not be 
reduced to shape in his mind. They could not put 
themselves into words. The forms of the worship 
were an attempt to express them. 

One would doubt of any one instance of this kind. 
But the more one thinks of the objects of Koman reve- 
rence, the more strongly is the same conviction brought 
home to us. The most obvious example, the one which 
has forced itself upon every student, is also the most 
important. The Zeus of Olympus becomes the Jupiter 
of the Capitol. That which belonged to him as one of 
his Homeric epithets, is felt to describe his inmost nature. 
The Compeller of the Clouds is recognised as first of all 
the Father, the source of Roman law and order ; dwell- 
ing in the city ; its Parent and its King. I associate the 
two ideas which had such an affinity for each other in 
the Eoman mind, which never could be far asunder, be- 
cause their union throws light upon those stages of Eoman 
History to which I have alluded already. The passing 
away of the kingly period, whenever and however it took 
place, may have been accomplished without that tremen- 
dous sense of interruption, that violent wrench in the mind 
of the nation, which we connect with such a revolution. 
The story of Lucretia must express the deepest meaning 
of that event. Whether it actually answers to the 
fact or not, whether Brutus spoke the words which the 
poet-historian of the later time attributed to him, or 



234 EOME IN ITS YOUTH. [LECT. 

some yet more simple words, we are sure tliat it lias a 
place in tlie enduring records of humanity wliich no 
fiction can claim. And tliis is because the oath which 
declared that the purity of no Roman house, the honour 
of no Eoman matron, should again be outraged by 
regal baseness and tyranny, announced the continuance, 
not the dissolution, of the comm^onwealth, nay, even of 
the kingdom. It had been dissolved already, so far as 
it could be, by the crimes of Tarquin and his son. He 
had extinguished his own authority ; but the authority 
remained still in that presence which was recognised in 
the citadel. The royal father there had not abdicated ; 
he retained his claim upon the allegiance of his sub- 
jects ; they claimed him as their protector and avenger. 
In the belief of his continued dominion, the fathers 
could still maintain their original dignity, the Consuls 
could go forth to the battle against the enemy, could 
receive the obedience of the citizens. There was all 
that invisible awe, that certain punishment of the wrong- 
doer, which, when separated from protection and fatherly 
government, no priestly contrivances, no plots of states- 
men could make effectual to restrain the wickedness of 
any man who had the power to commit it. The other 
beautiful story, in which Eoman freedom is again in- 
volved with female purity, the deliverance of the child 
with the deliverance of the city, and both with the 
exercise of the father's affection and authority, still 
points to the same divine asserter of right, still affirms 
that human fatherhood is watched over and protected 
by an unseen father. The act of Virginius in that 
venerable tradition, was the appeal to a higher law 



1.] EOME IN ITS YOUTH, 235 

against that whicli -the Decemvirs were enacting, against 
any outward force that they possessed. The majesty 
of human relationships, their inviolahility in the case 
of the humblest man or cliild, rested upon the faith that 
a true and righteous government was maintaining the 
family, was maintaining the city, and would put down 
any temporary ruler who denied the source from 
which his power proceeded, the end for which it was 
created. 

I must again observe that the force of this evidence 
is not at all weakened by our inability to ascertain, how 
nearly these tales represent the actual occurrence. As 
a test for ascertaining the nature and the ground of the 
popular belief, of that which constituted the Roman 
religion, they have the most indisputable significance. 
And it is surely this religion of which Niebuhr speaks 
as being honest, faithful, and veracious. Such names 
could not belong to it, if it had only led to certain good 
results. In this place may I not go further and say, ap- 
pealing to all your national honesty and national faith, 
it never could have produced results in any degree good, 
except so far as it was good and true. We dare not 
call the conviction, the religious conviction, which is 
expressed in the acts of Brutus and Yirginius, false, 
without undermining whatever is most solid and most 
deep in our own belief. We must suppose that that 
religion pointed to something, most imperfectly deve- 
loped and ascertained, which any clearer revelation 
would not annul, but confirm and bring into full light. 

The other assertion of Niebuhr's, that this religion 
was something altogether different from Stoicism, is also, 



236 ROME IN ITS YOUTH. [LECT, 

it seems to me, irrefragable. The stoical belief of a 
Fate, tlie stoical belief in God as identical with the 
world, has surely very little in common with this belief 
in a fatherly government, this* reverence for a person, 
this confession of a power which may be appealed to 
against suffering and wrong, instead of being called in 
to account for the existence of it. How Stoicism after- 
wards connected itself with this older faith, how it put 
on some of its forms and gave back to it some of its 
own conclusions, how it came in to supply some of the 
blanks which the ignorance of the old times had left, 
to explain and indorse the errors into which they had 
fallen, I may try to show you in another Lecture. But 
in the meantime, both the reasons which I have alleged 
and the authority of the great German historian, will, 
I hope, induce you to acknowledge that the practical 
popular faith had a firmer and deeper ground than this 
school doctrine. 

The old traditions which speak of the son of Mars, — 
the warrior, the lawgiver, — as the founder of the city, of 
the priestly sage who received his inspirations from the 
nymph Egei>ia as the second king, do not, I think, merely 
offer hints about the races of which Rome may have been 
composed, and their respective contributions to its sta- 
bility ; they point out also the order in which its insti- 
tutions must have arisen, the relation in which they 
must always have stood to each other. The sacerdotal 
part of the commonwealth, important as it was, was 
always subordinate to its legal and governing part. It 
was born to rule and conquer. It learnt to connect 
worship and sacrifice with that vocation. To forget 



I.] ROME IN ITS YOUTH. 237 

this order is to misunderstand the character of the city 
in all its periods, to lose sight of one of the chief causes 
of its strength as well as of its weakness. It was this 
which taught the priest always to look upon himself 
as the servant of the commonwealth, who was to use 
liis wisdom and his lore for its occasions, not to sepa- 
rate himself from it in the pursuit of certain studies 
and ends of his own. It was this which tended to make 
liim continually the agent and tool of a State-policy. 
It was this which taught the Roman to connect the 
highest thoughts of devotion and personal sacrifice with 
the service of his country. It was this that disposed 
him to think of the sacrifices to the Gods as mere con- 
trivances for producing a certain impression upon the 
minds of the people or the soldiers. It was this which 
preserved the Roman religion from some of the worst 
tendencies of the Hindu or Brahminical religion. It 
was this which made it liable to acquire a kind of false- 
hood which was peculiarly its own. But we should 
forget the letter of these traditions, and still more, the 
moral of them, if we concluded that because some of 
the more elaborate pontifical institutions may have 
grown up subsequently, there was not a religion in the 
Roman state from its outset. It opens with a story of 
augury and divination. What did those divinations 
imply ? They indicated, I think, from the beginning, 
they indicated always, a belief that the divine ruler of 
the city was provident of its welfare, that the future as 
well as the past was known to him. They indicated 
a conviction that in some way or other he intended to 
make his mind known to his creatures, that they too 



238 EOME IN ITS YOUTH. [LECT. 

were meant to exercise foresiglit, that there must be 
a means of regulating their acts and designs according" 
to his purpose. The God was "believed to direct the 
city before there had been any careful arrangement of 
ministers to conduct his service, before the order of the 
services had been authoritatively settled. 

The greatness of Rome depended on this faith. So 
soon as it decayed, the Roman began to believe in his 
auguries, in his sacrifices, in his religion, not in a Ruler, 
not in a Father. Thus the Religion destroyed itself. 
It affirmed the existence of Gods ; it gradually recog- 
nised them as its own creatures. What it had formed it 
must sustain ; the first lie cannot live if there is not a 
second to join with it ; if that does not find some other 
to keep it in circulation. The web becomes more intri- 
cate every hour. The danger of disturbing any thread 
of it seenis more terrible. But in some way or other it 
must be torn asunder ; the earnestness, the faith, of the 
Roman demanded that it should. By what agents and 
processes the work was accomplished, we may consider 
hereafter; what good come out of it and what evil. 
But let us rest for the present in the conviction that 
Roman history, the further we trace it, will furnish 
larger and deeper illustrations of the principle that 
whatever is false is feeble and the cause of feebleness, 
that whatever is truth must come forth and vindicate 
its might before the Universe. We need that convic- 
tion if we would understand the past ; we need it for 
the work of every day ; we shall hold it more firmly 
when we look back upon our present existence from 
that which is to come. 



II.] ROME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. 239 



LECTURE 11. 

ROME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. 

Marcus Aurelius in his meditations Ibade himself 
remember at all times that he was a male and a E-oman. 
Yet Marcus Aurelius wrote in Greek ; his studies had 
"been mostly in Greek philosophy; he lived at a time 
when the Greek culture appeared to have achieved a 
victory over the Boman intellect, and when Rome had 
as little right to boast of freedom as any of the cities 
that she had subdued. Why did the emperor cling so 
tenaciously to that form of character which one might 
have expected that a man who possessed his lore, and 
aimed at his objects, would have almost scorned ? 

This question touches closely upon some of those 
which were raised in my last Lectm'e, upon the relation 
in which Greek politics, as well as Greek religion, stood 
to the Roman; upon the relation between the Roman 
religion and Stoicism. Both these subjects will come 
more distinctly and prominently before us to-night. 

I endeavoured to prove that the authority of the 
father was the ground of Roman government, the source 
of the Roman reverence for law, the secret at once of 



240 EOME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. [LECT. 

Roman dominion and of Roman freedom. "Whatever 
was strong in tlie national mind was derived from this 
authority, or was intertwined with it. The institutions 
of the country bore witness of it from the beginning ; 
the witness grew stronger and more marked as they 
developed themselves. The principle was manifested 
in the continuous order of the commonwealth; it was 
manifested quite as remarkably in those events which 
disturbed existing rulers and introduced social changes. 
When we turned to the religion, there was a series of 
facts exactly corresponding with these. The idea of 
fatherhood and fatherly government was every where 
expressed in the Roman reverence for their Gods. It 
gave a unity to their belief, though every thing in the 
outward conditions of that belief was hostile to unity. 
It made that worship real and substantial. For the 
Roman could never suppose that his faith or his concep- 
tions had called that divine power into existence which 
was the only origin and protection of them. His faith 
became a palpable and practical contradiction, the moment 
he dreamed that his own fatherly feelings had led him to 
attribute the same to the Gods. These feelings perished 
if there was not some fountain deeper than themselves, 
out of which they had issued, from which they could be 
renewed. Tlie honesty and veracity which Niebuhr 
claims for the Roman religion, must be utterly denied 
to it if this were not the case. 

It appeared to us that the Greek started on that long 
and adventurous voyage, in the course of which he saw 
so many cities and men, and suffered so much by sea 
and land, from a different port than this. It would be 



II.] ROME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. 241 

very wrong indeed to say that tliere was not in him a 
strong sense of the preciousness and sacredness of human 
relationships. The Homeric poems would refute hy a 
hundred beautiful stories so rash an assertion. The 
legends of the Trojan war abundantly testify that the 
marriage-bond, reverence for its permanence, a determi- 
nation to punish all violations of it, lay at tlie root of 
Greek society. The sense of kindred every where mixes 
itself with the association in cities, with the honour of 
the kings, even with the courtesies of enemies to each 
other. The affection of husband and wife is seen and 
honoured in the city which the crime of Paris has 
doomed to destruction. The same habits of mind taking 
even a stronger form, linking the roving disposition of 
the sea-wanderer to the sympathies of home, reappear 
in the Odyssey. And I need not remind any of you 
that the religious or theocratic element in these poems 
answers to the human. The Gods have their relation- 
ships, their affections, their jealousies among each other; 
they are parents and kinsmen to the earthly heroes. 
Those who founded cities could not establish them or 
rule them, if they could not claim to be the children or 
the friends of some unseen guardian. 

These are unquestionably important elements in the 
life of this wonderful race. But the more you consider 
them, the more, I think, you will be convinced that the 
voluntary relationship, that into Avhich men enter of 
themselves, and not that in which they find themselves 
by the law of their birth, was the prominent one in the 
Greek mind. The wife is the object of the liero's 
choice. The choice has been confirmed by human laws 



242 E05[E UNDER GEEEK TEACHERS. [LECT. 

and divine rites ; gods and men will defend it. Xo 
other man, be he ever so great, may outrage it. But 
Agamemnon may vindicate his own right to the captive 
taken in war, as being not less agTeeable in form or na- 
ture than Clytemnestra. This is clearly a state of feeling 
quite unlike that of the Oriental ; but it is no foundation 
for such a household as the Roman delighted to contem- 
plate. 

The sons will probably go forth presently, to seek, 
under the guidance of fortune better than their parent, 
for some new home. Firm friendships may be formed, 
colonies may be established, by these wanderers, not 
without a sense of strong love for the land that has been 
left behind. Various political combinations of unspeak- 
able interest to after times may be attempted by them. 
There may be the general council and the clever tyrant; 
but the stable j)olity, the settled dominion, must be 
sought elsewhere. 

A similar observation applies to the religion. The 
Homeric gods sympathise with men, mix in their battles, 
teach them various arts ; but it is impossible to feel that 
they have a right to govern, that they are exalted above 
the tempers and passions of those who inhabit the lower 
world. If Zeus holds the scales in which the fate of 
two combatants are poised, he is open to the importu- 
nities of Aphrodite or Thetis, to the rebukes of Hera. 
We feel instinctively that such beings might attach 
themselves to many impulses and affections of men's 
hearts, might be invoked in many moments of pleasure 
or of distress, might be felt to inspire the singer or the 
sailor or the warrior, might represent many movements 



II.] EOME UNDEE GREEK TEACHEES. 243 

in the natural world, hut that they could not, strictly 
speaking, be revered. They were the elde brothers or 
sisters of the human race ; the awe of fatherhood did not 
dwell in them. 

Consequently the Greek was always liable to fancy 
that he was the measure and standard to which all 
things must be referred, — that laws, institutions, princi- 
ples, gods, were his offspring. This, I say, was his 
tendency. And it is to the struggle against this ten- 
dency, the struggle to find some foundation to rest upon 
which he did not create, that we may trace all the 
noblest efforts of the Greek mind in its legislation, to 
a certain extent in its art, to a still higher degree in its 
later poetry, more completely still in all that is enduring 
of its philosophy. The lawgiver must find an authority 
to which he can appeal, that is raised above those who 
are the subjects of it, that is not at the mercy of their 
caprices. The Dorian would vindicate this authority, 
even though taste, cultivation, the very freedom which 
he maintained against external despots, were abandoned 
to secure it. The Ionian, who could not submit to such 
sacrifices, must try to maintain the higher part of 
humanity against the lower, the intellectual against the 
animal. The fight was a very hard one. For though 
his countrymen might have the keenest intellects ever 
bestowed on any race, they were also in the completest 
sense animals, always ready to use their intellects as 
ministers of their lower appetites. The sculptor might 
assist in counteracting this tendency, if he could present 
the objects of worship in beautiful forms, with the highest 
intellect pervading and quickening them. The human 

E 2 



244 ,EOME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. [LECT. 

creature miglit at least see tliat they were elevated above 
liimself, tliougli they Avere sharers of his nature. The 
dramatic poet took a higher flight. He discovered in 
the old traditions of his country v/itnesses of a divine 
law which would bend to no human phantasies ; of 
crimes — above all, crimes against the relations of life — 
avenging themselves after the lapse of generations ; of a 
fixed unbending destiny wdiich did not prohibit tlie 
►strife of human wills, but overcame them. Then came 
the eager search of the philosopher for some principle 
in physical things or numbers, or in human nature itself, 
to which all things might be traced, and which no in- 
ventions of men could alter. Then came his vehement 
protest against the Homeric gods as creations of man's 
fancy ; then his vindication of that which is in itself 
against that which is produced by any art; then his 
assertion that the excellence that dwells in the Gods 
must be the ground and type of all human excellence, 
and that man must not dare to impute his Avrongs and 
perversities to them, unless he would make his standard 
of what was right for states and individuals mutable 
and useless. 

These works are, it seems to me, grander in their ulti- 
mate aim, more instructive by their connexion with eacli 
other and with Greek history, more valuable even in 
their defects, than for those separated and isolated beau- 
ties upon Avhich admiring critics are wont to dwell. 
They help us to perceive a unity of purpose in this 
nation, like that which I have endeavoured to trace in 
the Roman. The aspiration of the Greeks after an 
ideal of humanity, after a wisdom wdiich is implied in 



II.] EOME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. 245 

all the acts of the understanding of the highest men, 
but cannot be limited to them or derived from them, 
may be seen in the rudeness of the Homeric life, no less 
than in the greatest refinement of the age of Pericles, or 
in the loftiest designs of Alexander. It may be seen in 
the confused Mythology of the Homeric poems, and 
seen also in the protest against that Mythology in the 
Republic of Plato. In comparing the two periods, the 
evils which were developed in the later time and had 
not been developed in the earlier, the deeper truths 
which had come to light in the later period and that 
liad not come to light in the earlier, and which made 
the false notions of that time manifest, we have a right, 
I am sure, to affirm concerning Greeks what I did affirm 
concerning Latins, that in no case was the lie productive 
of good, that in no case was the detection of it produc- 
tive of evil. No, nor of unbelief. On the contrary, 
there was a seed of unbelief, of irreverence, of contempt 
for what is divine, in all the Homeric fables. The faith 
which was latent in these fables was the confession of a 
great eternal verity ; the seed of irreverence and unbelief 
was unfolded in those who, with the Athenian Sophists, 
proclaimed man to be the standard ajid measure of all 
things, and in those also who with their enemy, Aristo- 
phanes, clung to the old traditions respecting the gods, 
and yet made the gods the objects of sport and ridicule. 
The seed of good and of truth was unfolded in those 
who maintained in fact, or sought to prove by argument, 
that there is a substantial and universal Ptigliteousness 
and Wisdom which must be confessed by all who would 
be righteous and wise themselves. 



246 ROME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. [lECT, 

But it does not follow because the Greek mind had 
a great and glorious problem of its own, wliicli it was 
trying to work out, — of wliicli if it could not discover 
the solution, it might show us whence the solution is to 
be expected, — that it would, therefore, make its work in- 
telligible to the Roman. There are many evidences 
that it did not, many satisfactory reasons why it could 
not. If there is any part of Greek speculations which 
we might suppose would have had an affinity with the 
Roman intellect, it is that part which refers to polities 
and politics. Two of the greatest works of the greatest 
philosophers of Greece were directly occupied with this 
subject. They were familiar to Cicero, as to all the 
accomplished Komans of his time. He held the names 
of Plato and Aristotle in the profoundest respect. He 
regarded Plato as more eloquent than almost all profes- 
sors of eloquence. Nevertheless, there is not the slightest 
proof that his own political ideas were determined, even 
greatly modified, by their teaching. His fragment on 
the Republic shows that he had learnt his idea of insti- 
tutions and of society in an entirely different school; 
and if in the book of Laws there is more to remind us of 
the work attributed, rightly or wrongly, to Plato under 
that title, his saying, that he preferred the Twelve Tables 
to all the dogmas of the philosophers, was undoubtedly 
sincere. I do not see how it could be otherwise. The 
most memorable and striking passages of Plato's Re- 
public, those which were most valuable to Greece, and 
may be precious to Britons, Germans, or Frenchmen, 
did not meet at any point the thoughts which had been 
awakened in Romans by their polity, encountered a set 



IT.] KOME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. 247 

of questions and difficulties witli wliicli tliey liad never 
Ibeen exercised, pointed to an ideal which they had 
never dreamed of. On the other hand, the practical sug- 
gestions in that book, which they could understand, 
must have been utterly shocking to them. JVe may see 
how Plato came to defend a community of wives, the 
experiences of modern Europe helping us even more than 
any reasonings ; we may feel that with his knowledge 
and his ignorance, it was almost impossible that he 
should not regard so fatal a result as the condition of 
a perfect society. The Roman could only look upon it 
as the most accursed scheme for the dissolution of all 
society. In Aristotle's polity he would find no such 
blot. Human relationships- he would there see treated 
with profound reverence, as the primitive types of all 
the most advanced forms of political life. But even in 
-this beautiful conception there would be something en- 
tirely alien from the habits of his mind. Each relation 
seems considered by itself, as if it might unfold itself 
into a separate kind of government. The parental 
authority is not here, more than anywhere else in Greek 
literature, that centre to which all the other aspects of 
human life are referred. And there is in Aristotle an 
utter want of the divine groundwork of these hu.man 
relations, which the Eoman never forgot. Partly for 
that reason, the relation between the master and the 
slave has none of the embryo filial character vvhich it 
had in the Eoman family. It is based by Aristotle upon 
the great principle that the intellectual being must rule 
the animal ; the perilous deduction from that principle, 
that the Greek was meant to rule all other creatures. 



248 EOME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. [LECT. 

being as little disguised in the tlieoiy of the master as 
it was in the practice of the pupil. 

Hence it was not possible, I should suppose, for a 
Roman to enter heartily into either of these master- 
works, or even into the great Greek histories of which 
they were in some sense the expositions. Herodotus 
was too free and cosmopolitan for the home taste of the 
Latin ; Thucydides treated of those wars of principles 
of which, in the Republican time at least, he had no 
experience. At what point, then, was it possible for the 
Greek intellect to come in contact with that which was 
so unlike it? How was the affinity created which was 
afterwards productive of such remarkable effects ? How- 
ever little a hasty a priori reflection might prepare us 
for such a result, it was Greece when it had become 
unpolitical, when social problems had been either cast 
away by its sons in despair, or had been merely con- 
nected with the phenomena of the universe ; it was 
Greece deprived of its great masters, fallen under the 
tyranny of mere commentators and debaters ; it was 
Greece framing schemes of the universe to console her- 
self for the loss of the moral freedom and intellectual 
dominion which she had once sighed for and almost 
grasped ; it was this Greece, so prostrate and helpless, 
which appealed to the hearts that had been nourished in 
the traditions of Brutus, and Fabricius, and Regulus ; it 
was this which excited the terror of their elders; it 
was this, which no denunciations and protests could 
prevent from introducing into the city legions of 
thoughts directed apparently against a world into which 
the Roman arms had never been carried. 



II.] ROME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. 249 

What was this new world which Alexander had not 
discovered, but which men so much feebler than he was 
dreamed that they could conquer? It was one which 
had not been unvisited bv the imaorination in former 
days. Greek legends had spoken of a lord of the sun, 
a lord of the air, a lord of the deep with all the trea- 
sures that lay in it, a lord of the subterranean abyss 
and. its tires. Beside these, had dwelt the possessors of 
different stars in the firmament, forms that haunted 
every glade and rivulet, Tritons and Naiads innume- 
rable in Poseidon's kingdom, male and female powers of 
horror and vengeance that executed the commands of 
Pluto. All had human tempers, characters, sympathies, 
shapes ; all spoke of different emotions and habits, of 
gladness, of wonder, of terror, in human hearts. But 
the acts and offices of all were connected with the opera- 
tions of nature, with those operations which were most 
familiar to Greek observation and experience. The 
impulse to penetrate into nature, to examine its secrets, 
as well as to turn its powers to account, had therefore 
been fostered not only by the necessities of the husband- 
man and the sailor, but by the teaching of the priest, 
by the belief of the people. The voices of gods and 
goddesses seemed beckoning, even wooing, the shepherd 
and the fisherman to ascend the hills or plunge into the 
ocean caverns where they had their dwellings. The 
passion had been felt by the earliest Ionian philosopher, 
and had been rewarded by useful discoveries. Thales 
had calculated eclipses, and given help to armies. It 
had also been the cause of dangers. Anaxagoras, living 
in the most intellectual period of Greece, had main- 



250 EOME UNDER GEEEK TEACHEES. [LECT. 

tained that a higher intellect than that wliich was 
directing the sculptor or the poet must be ruling in the 
stars. His doctrine had seemed to his countrymen 
worthy of banishment. They craved for human fellow- 
ship and sympathies in their gods ; he seemed to 
be substituting for them a cold abstraction. It was 
otherwise with the warm-hearted patriot Empedocles, 
amidst the volcanic wonders of Sicily. To him every- 
thing in the operations of nature suggested thoughts 
of the affinities and antipathies of men and of king- 
doms ; to these, as to ultimate principles, he referred 
them. 

Such dreams and explanations had no longer any 
interest for the Greek thinker. Even the dogma of 
Anaxagoras had become too personal for him. But the 
desire to understand nature, and to connect it by some 
link or other with human life, had descended upon him 
as the last relic of his ancestral inheritance, which he 
might still boast of, and might perhaps improve in his 
own hands. The Epicurean retained most of that side 
of the old Greek feeling which connected nature with 
man, and made it subordinate to his interests and 
delights. But in place of the fresh joyous sympathy 
with nature as the kinsman of man, as peopled with 
beings like him and caring for him, the dull dry maxim 
that he is to get all the pleasure he can out of it, had to 
be sustained by a theory which showed out of what 
-seeds, and by what combinations, the great system had 
come into existence without any creative energy or will. 
The gods, Epicurus honoured as beings having those 
very tastes and forms, that indolence and apathy, which 



II.] EOME UNDER GEEEK TEACHERS. ^51 

he regarded as the perfection of humanity. So far he 
reflected something of the temper of those ages which he 
ridiculed ; only to carry out his idea and preserve men 
from anxiety about the future, these higher human 
beings must be entirely excluded from all relation with 
and dominion over those who dwell upon this planet. 
On the other hand, the Stoic would ascribe the most 
restless activity to the gods, the most unceasing interest 
in what men were doing. How could it be otherwise ? 
For were not they the moving powers and energies of 
this world, another name for all the secret and manifest 
powers and operations of nature, by which for good or 
evil we are most affected ? How reasonable then to pay 
them homage ! How wise were all the precepts of anti- 
quity respecting their worship ! All the philosopher 
can add to the old doctrine is a still higher reverence for 
the world itself, the whole divinity of which these are 
parts. All he has to do is to observe the fixed unde- 
viating fate which regulates its acts and movements, 
and to submit himself to the same rule, quenching joys 
and sorrows, fears and hopes, as caprices unworthy of 
one who has risen to the apprehension of a government 
so calm and stedfast. To break the chains of Epicurean 
and Stoical dogmatism, to use that method of Plato by 
which he sought in the conflict and collision of two 
truths to discover a higher wherein both were involved, 
for the oversetting of all affirmations and the mainte- 
nance of a perpetual equilibrium, was at last the sole 
function of the Academician. But in his progi'css to 
scepticism, he halted at several stages, coquetted with 
several positive beliefs, always left an opening for 



252 ROME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. [LECT. 

practical acquiescence, even wliile lie was most fostering 
the liabit of speculative doubt. 

How these three forms of opinion acted on the 
Roman mind, what their influence was on the Roman 
faith, we must learn not by guesses but from documents. 
Cicero's book on the Nature of the Gods is the classical 
one on the subject. It would be difficult to imagine one 
more interesting and more valuable. But I cannot 
help thinking that the meaning of it is sometimes mis- 
taken, owing to prejudices Avhich we bring with us 
to the study of it. I will point out one or two of these 
before I proceed to speak of the book itself. 

Gibbon has said in a well-known passage : ' The 
^ various modes of worship that prevailed in the Roman 
' world were all considered by the people as equally 
' true, by the philosopher as equally false, and by the 
* magistrate as equally useful.' I will not now speak of 
the first member of this triad. It does not directly con- 
cern our present business. But if the second is correct 
of the philosophers, under which name must be included 
all the teachers who influenced the Roman mind — all 
the persons in Cicero's dialogue — the most notorious facts 
must mislead us, the plainest passages in the book must 
have some new and strange sense put upon them. 
Apparently Velleius, who maintains the Epicurean side 
in the controversy, asserts with good faith that the gods 
have human forms and natures, and applauds his master 
for worshipping them in secret, though he did not admit 
their interference with the administration of the world. 
A very large part of the argument of Balbus in the 
second book is devoted to the defence on philosophical 



II.] ROME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. 253 

grounds, and not as a question of personal expediency, 
of tlie old Roman legends respecting the gods. He is 
vehement and prolix in this argument, and he connects 
it with the fundamental maxims of his scliool. Gotta, 
the Academician, is the only one who treats these legends 
with anything approaching to levity. He was himself 
the Pontifex : Balbus appeals to him with great solem- 
nity not to forget his office, and what it involves. He 
declares, abandoning for the time his laughing mood, 
that nothing which he says must be taken as in the 
least at variance with his sacred functions, but that he 
does not conceive he is bound to respect the Stoical 
arguments in support of the traditions, because he 
respects the traditions themselves. I am not saying- 
yet how these words are to be accounted for; I merely 
say that, as this conversation is supposed to take place 
among friends, opening their minds to each other with 
perfect freedom, not scrupling to utter words that 
must have sounded very strange to their countrymen, 
Gibbon's dogmatic assertion must require very great 
explanations and deductions, before it can even approach 
the truth. 

What I have said about Cotta, or rather what he says 
about himself, may seem amply to confirm the other 
dogma, that the magistrates regarded all religions as 
equally useful. How much the religion of Eome always, 
even in the earliest times, was liable to become a state 
religion, I admitted in the last Lecture, How much the 
danger had increased with the growth of the common- 
wealth and the enlargement of its limits, I am most 
anxious that you should remember. It is this fact 



254 ROME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. [LECT. 

wliicli accounts in a great measure for tlie opposition 
which the Greek literature and philosophy encountered 
from such Romans as Cato the Censor; this explains 
the eagerness with which they were hailed by the 
younger men. The Censor had a strong conviction 
that the religion had some very close connexion with 
the order of the state, with the preservation of its polity. 
What the connexion was he knew as little as men of his 
character and class generally do ; he had a vague im- 
pression that somehow people were kept from crimes 
which his office did not enable him to suppress, by invi- 
sible terrors. He thought that traditions of heroes 
descending to the battle, must stimulate the corn-age of 
the legions. lie may have found it convenient some- 
times, to stop the holding of the Comitia by a sinister 
augury. With these calculations there will, I conceive, 
have been mixed up the old patriarchal feeling of the 
Eomans, a sense that the glory of the Eoman homes 
was departing, a just and humble confession that his 
own faith and practice were inferior to those of his 
fathers, a belief that his office laid upon him the respon- 
sibility of not abetting a fm'ther degeneracy. There is 
no difficulty in sketching such a likeness as this ; num- 
bers of men in all times and countries might sit for it. 
Of course there will be m^irked individual lines in each 
case. But this, or something like this, I suppose, 
would be a fair representation of the motives and argu- 
ments which created the Eoman Graioijliobia, And 
the Roman Graiomania in the yomig men will have had 
as intelligible an explanation. They had been led to 
reverence veracity as a specially Roman virtue, and 



II.] HOME UNDER GEEEK TEACIIEES. 255 

tliey found themselves surrounded by men wlio seemed 
to think it their Koman duty, to maintain a show and an 
appearance of truth for the sake of a certain result. 
They had been taught that Order belonged to the 
Boman state, and they found a multitude of disorders 
perpetrated in its name. They heard of the sacredness 
of relationships, they saw very little of it ; the feeling of 
them had not passed in any strength into their own hearts, 
though there was a lingering consciousness of their worth, 
and even of their power. Their ambition, a Roman ambi- 
tion, led them to be desirous of being conspicuous in the 
forum. To be so they must have a skill in debate 
which did not belong to their ancestors, as well as an 
acquaintance with many things of which they were 
ignorant. Here were teachers who boldly looked into 
the facts of the universe ; here were men who spoke of 
an order much more perfect than the Roman order; 
here were men who taught a severe self-restraint, such 
as the older Romans had practised ; here wxre men 
who cultivated the faculty of seeing the two sides of 
a question, and of showing what might be said for each, 
as it could be cultivated nowhere else. These were 
reasons strong enough why magistrates of the Roman 
people, and those who were aspiring to magistracy, 
should reject the Greek learning when first it appeared 
in Rome, or should promote it. They indicate a mix- 
tiu'e of feelings on both sides ; the honest with the 
impure, the manly with the frivolous and the cowardly. 
But they do not warrant the charge against either, of 
that monstrous wickedness which Gibbon imputes to 
the most eminent men of the Republic as of the Empire 



256 EOME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. [LECT* 

tliat tliey had no other reason whatever for supporting" 
the religion of their country, than that they considered 
it a serviceable lie. There was probably no man in 
Rome, not the best and noblest of all, who might not at 
times, by words or acts, yield to this abominable habit 
of mind. If it had not been so, the Republic would 
not have fallen. But I am convinced there was no great 
man, not Cotta, certainly not Cicero, in whom another 
and totally opposite feeling did not dwell; combining 
with his most sacred Roman traditions ; not only sus- 
taining itself in spite of his Greek philosophy, but often 
by the help of it. 

No one doubts, I imagine, that Cicero's character is a 
complicated one, hard to describe faithfully upon a single 
hypothesis, capable of being contemplated on various 
sides, supplying plentiful excuses for a severe criticism 
as well as for cordial admiration. Since he was the man 
who was most perfectly seasoned in Greek literature of 
all his cotemporaries ; since he was at the same time 
essentially Latin in thoughts, language, affections, charac- 
ter, and regarded all his Greek culture as ornamental and 
subsidiary ; since, nevertheless, he has taken more pains 
to show us how it might in his judgment be helpful to 
the main object of the Roman's life ; — he must be the 
best illustration we can find, both in his person and in his 
writings, of the whole subject. His vanity belongs to him- 
self; his political oscillations, and his domestic failures, 
much more to his time; the uncertainty of his conclu- 
sions, to his education both in the schools and at the bar. 
But beneath all these there lies the Roman reverence, the 
Roman sense of duty, the Roman tenderness and affec- 



II.] ROME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. 257 

tion, and, I must add, laying stress upon tlie adjective, 
tlie Roman love of trutli. That love of truth was alto- 
gether distinct from the Greek love of it. Truth in 
itself Cicero did not pursue or care for, or know the 
meaning of. But truth in institutions, truth in charac- 
ter, truth in the ordinary dealings of men, he did admire 
very heartily, even if various influences to the right and 
to the left made him deviate often and sadly from his 
standard. Now it is absolutely impossible that any 
one of these habits of mind could exist in a man who, 
consciously and habitually, regarded the worship of the 
gods of his country as something merely useful to the 
magistrate. 

Whence then arises that allusion to the two charac- 
ters of the priest and the reasoner, which occurs in his 
dialogue, and which does not seem to have caused him 
any great shock? I think the cause may be traced 
very clearly in the dialogue itself. It is evident that 
the graceful and accomplished Komans who discuss the 
question about the nature of the gods, are in themselves 
earnest energetic men ; but that they are liot more than 
half in earnest when tliey are met for such a business 
as this. It is not that there is any intentional levity in 
their manner ; it is not that they would not bring all the 
force and energy of their minds to bear upon it ; it is not 
that the eloquent reporter is not doing, as he always did 
in every work little or great, his very best. But it is, 
that they have a reserve of faith, as practical men, as 
men of work, which enables them to treat controversies, 
however interesting and important, as belonging to 
leisure. It is not the least a life and death que?tion 

S 



258 EOME UNDER GEEEK TEACHEES. [lECT. 

with tliem, whether Yelleius or Balbus is right. The 
actual reverence for a divine power cannot, they think 
and very often say, be in the least affected by the deter- 
mination to which this or that argument may lead them. 
If we take Cotta's words literally, and interpret them 
liberally, this is what he understood when he claimed 
the right to be as sceptical as he liked in his mere rea- 
sonings about the nature of the gods. Whatever he did 
believe, he says, he never could believe with Epicu- 
rus. Yet he could gratify the follower of Epicurus by 
showing that all which Lucilius urged in favour of the 
popular mythology, as included in his great world-god, 
was entirely futile. Cicero himself concludes, to the 
surprise of his reader, with saying that he differed from 
Cotta, the patron of his own sect, and was inclined on 
this subject to agree with the Stoic ; an assertion of 
which he makes his brother afterwards remind him in 
the book on Divination. Evidently his intellect went 
with Cotta, who demolishes Stoicism with the rhetoric 
of his reporter, not his own. But because the conclu- 
sion of Balbus seemed more to favour the faith in a 
divine presiding power, he accepted it, being convinced 
that that was true, whatever else might be false. 

Before we assume that either Cotta or Cicero thought 
this belief was to be upheld merely because it was use- 
ful, we should recollect what always was and must have 
been a Koman's test of truth. That which could sup- 
port nothing, appeared to him essentially unsubstantial. 
That which was able to sustain such a state and republic 
as Eome, had in it tokens of solidity which could not 
be gainsayed, which must be confessed, however difficult 



II.] EOME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. 259 

it miglit be to prove by other evidence that it was strong 
and ought to stand. It was this test vv'-hich made him 
feel the weakness of that which he had borrowed from 
the Greeks^ and which, as far as Avords and logic went, 
seemed so much less assailable than that which he had 
inherited. All these controversies and conclusions of 
the sects were no basis for a society, could keep no 
society alive. There must be something firmer and 
deeper than they were. If it was not the traditions 
which had been so intertwined with the history and 
growth of Rome, what was it ? Must it not be some- 
thing in them which no patriot, no true man, could dare 
to part with, which he must maintain against the world 
and against himself? 

But then to discern what this was, became every day 
more difiicult. For there were two processes going on 
simultaneously, each of which made the other more 
perplexing. There was that process of decay in the 
inner domestic life of Eome, and, consequently, of decay 
in its institutions, which continually warned all thought- 
ful Romans of coming ruin : and yet, as it affected their 
own characters and the clearness of their own vision, 
made them less able to understand wherein the greatness 
and safety of their city consisted. It was easy to feel 
and denounce the cruelty of factions, the venality of 
officials, the oppression of provinces — easy to foretel 
whither all these were leading. But it was not easy so 
to trace all the symptoms to the constitutional malady 
from which they had proceeded, as to avoid the trial of 
a number of plausible insufficient remedies, some of 
which were hastening the death of the patient. It was 

s 2 



260 ROME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. [LECT. 

most difficult to one who sought to preserve the springs 
of the nation's life, not to be tender also of the mud 
in which they were hidden. It was at least as difficult 
for one who saw how necessary it was to sweep that 
away, not to overlook the only instrument of health and 
puritication. 

For it must not be forgotten that though the Roman 
did not give up his traditions for the sake of his philo- 
sophy, his philosophy was in a number of ways acting 
upon those traditions, and showing large portions of 
them to be untenable. This is the other process to 
which I alluded. Their joint efiect is nowhere, I think, 
so visible, as in Cicero's work on Divination. Niebivlir, 
I have been told, though I cannot remember to have 
read the passage in his writings myself, has somewhere 
denounced this book with great vehemence, considering 
it as the worst exhibition of Cicero's character, with 
which in general he is disposed to deal very tenderly. I 
can see some grounds for such an opinion. The dialogue 
is a far less interesting and agreeable one, than that on 
the ' Nature of the Gods.' Cicero's brother, who defends 
divination on Stoical maxims in the first book, argues 
his case as if he expected to be confuted. Under cover 
of his name, Cicero is able to introduce long extracts 
from his own poems, which are brought forward as an 
argumentum ad hominem, to convict him of attaching 
iiiith in auguries respecting the Catilinarian conspiracy. 
When he proceeds to demolish these pleas in his second 
book, there are more signs of direct disbelief in the 
popular faith without any clear assertion of the grounds 
upon which he would tolerate it, than are at all consis- 



II.] ROME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. 2G1 

tent with the sincerity and manliness wliicli one wishes 
to give him credit for, and which in general, after all 
deductions, we feel did belong to him. But the more 
we look at the book, the more, I think, we shall be in- 
clined to qualify the censure which we may at iirst 
bestow on it, to acknowledge that the difficulties belonged 
more to the nature of the subject than to the timidity of 
the writer, and to perceive that he was struggling to be 
honest, in the midst of all his temptations to keep one 
doctrine for himself and to leave another for the people. 
The important point in this dialogue is that Quintus 
Cicero is defending the old traditions in the new and 
fashionable mode, lie is the Le Maistre of Eoman 
augury. Jt is exceedingly delightful and agreeable, of 
course, in his opinion, to believe what his revered fore- 
fathers believed ; but it is still more delightful to be able 
to justify them upon refined maxims which they never 
dreamt of. Quite in the spirit of his modern imitators? 
Quintus is destroying the root of the traditions, while 
he is vindicating all their most extravagant outgrowths. 
' How can you tell that the birds may not denote such 
and such things by their flight V Why should not there 
be correspondences between the internal appearances of 
beasts and the events of a campaign? Do you under- 
stand all the mysteries of this great world? What 
curious relations there are between the life in plants 
and the life in the human frame ! Is not all medicine 
grounded upon them ? ' These and the like formulas, 
with which we in our day are so painfully familiar; 
these appeals to the ignorance which should prompt us 
to seek for knowledge as an excuse for being always 



262 EOME UNDEE GEEEK TEACHEES. [LECT. 

without it; tliese arguments of mock humility which 
must make real humility for ever impossible ; these en- 
couragements of a universal scepticism, as the only way 
to an undistinguishing faith, were all tried and exhausted 
1900 years ago, in this conversation. It is surely a 
very high honour to Marcus Tullius Cicero that he 
detected the covert atheism which was lurking in them. 
He strikes a direct and deadly blow at the Stoic, who 
pretended that the world was all governed by a fixed 
fate, and yet could admit an art which made the course 
of events subject to accident. He asserts, with peculiar 
clearness, which one scarcely looks for in a Latin, the 
dignity of science, as being a continual escape from 
accident. But he does more. He clearly shows that 
it is a profaneness and wickedness to connect the divine 
nature, with which we ought to associate all permanence 
and stedfastness, primarily and chiefly with those things 
which belong to the realm of change and uncertamty. 
He may not follow out the conclusion as satisfactorily 
as we might desire ; but when he utters his conviction 
at the close of his book, ' that it is the part of a wise 

* man to defend the institutes of his ancestors, by re- 
^ taining sacrifices and ceremonies ; and that the beauty 
'- of the world, and the order of celestial things, demon- 
^ strate some excellent and eternal natm'e, which is to 

* be the object of wonder and reverent regard to the 
*" human race ; but that, at the same time, all the roots 
'- of superstition ought to be cast out, because it inter- 
*" feres with all stedfastness and quietness of mind,' we 
may trace, I think, a very strong, however imperfectly 
developed, conviction, that the ground of all that had 



II.] JiOME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. 263 

"been good in the worship of the Roman people — good in 
their institutions — had been not a faith in accidents or 
portents, but in the providence of a Being superior to 
all these, who may direct the flight or fall of a sparrow, 
but who is trusted because order, and not caprice, is the 
ground of his counsels. 

There is one most striking paragraph in the book on 

* the Nature of the Gods ' which I have dwelt upon with 
wonder, and which has been to me a great help in 
apprehending the thoughts which were at work in the 
author of both these books, and in the Romans of his 
time. It occurs at the close of that long speech of 
Cotta's in which he seems to have shaken the Roman 
Pantheon to its centre, exposing the different conceptions 
human and natural that had contributed to form it, and 
in which he had apparently sounded the very depths of 
scepticism, maintaining all events and actions to be a 
maze without a plan, and the wise man to be more 
miserable than the fool. ' All mortals,' he says, ' account 

* that all outward conveniences, vineyards, harvests, 
' olive-yards, the abundance of fruits, the commodities 

* and prosperities of life, come to them from the 
^ gods. But Virtue no one ever thanked the gods for 
' bestowing upon him. They are right, no doubt. For 

* we are justly praised for virtue, and in our virtue we 
^ have a right to glory. And this would not be the 

* case if we had it as a gift from a god, not from our- 
' selves. Whereas if we have gained any increase of 
^ lands or property, or if we have obtained any accidental 
*■ good or driven off any accidental ill, then we give the 

* gods thanks, for we suppose nothing has been gained 



264 EOME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. [LECT. 

^ for our own honour. Did ever any man tliank tlie 

* gods that he was a good man ? Of course not ; but 
, that he was ricli, that he was honoured, that he was 
' out of danger. It is for these reasons they call Jove 

* greatest and best; not that he makes us just, tempe- 

* rate, wise, but that he gives us safety, abundance, 

* wealth.' Here, no doubt, was tlie secret of the whole 
matter, what the Roman in his heart was searching 
after, — a god who should propose it as the first end of 
his dealings with his creatures to make them right and 
true, — who should in this way justify the fatherly 
character which the traditions of their country had attri* 
buted to him. To believe there was such a Being was 
most difficult, for the reason which Cotta so simply and 
honestly assigns. How could they then compliment 
themselves upon their virtue ? How could they credit 
themselves with it as their own ? If it was absolutely 
necessary to their dignity as Romans, or their dignity as 
philosophers, to do this, the aspiration after sucli a 
divinity must be for ever unsatisfied. But it might be 
discovered to some, by the blackness of their country^s 
crimes — by more melancholy experiences in themselves, 
— that it was necessary to their sincerity as Romans, to 
their w^isdom as philosophers, 7iot to do this; to do just 
the reverse of this, — to confess that the rectitude or man- 
liness which Avas in their fathers, that the craving for 
these which they discovered in themselves, were gifts 
which must have come from some higher source than a 
god of vineyards, or olive-yards, or money. Those who 
acquired that conviction might look natm-e in the face 
more stm*dily and manfully than any Greek philosopher, 



II.] ROME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. 265 

iniglit Ibelieve in an ideal of liiimanity higher than any 
Greek of the old time had yearned for, and yet might 
recognise a parental authority which did not belong- 
more to the infancy of his nation than to its fullest man- 
hood, not more to it than to all the tribes which it had 
conquered, and which it was appointed to civilize. 

I had intended to dwell at some length on the evi- 
dence for these conclusions which arises out of one of 
the non-theological treatises of Cicero, that fragment on 
the Republic to Avhich I referred in my last Lecture. I 
wished to do so, chiefly that I might show how insepa- 
rably the two sides of Roman life were connected, and 
how impossible it is to understand any of those thoughts 
which seem to take a philosophical form in the later 
Roman literature, till we have seen them tried in their 
application to government and to affairs. But I will 
content myself with referring you to one passage, inte- 
resting in itself, but far more interesting in its relation 
to the whole object of the work. It is the passage in 
which Scipio begins his discussion on the different 
forms which a commonwealth may take. I should wish 
you to consider it only as it stands in the genuine frag- 
ment, not to make it stronger, as Mai does, by adding 
some sentences from Lactantius, wherein he professes to 
give the sentiments of Cicero upon the divine monarchy. 
Scipio affirms that he must begin his speech, as Aratus 
begins his poem, from Jove. When he is asked why 
he should imitate a poet in a grave discourse upon 
States, he says that it does so happen, he cannot tell 
how, it may be by the contrivance of princes for their 
own ends or for the general utility, but somehow 



266 EOME UNDKR GEEEK TEACHEES. [LECT. 

people have consented to speak of one king as ruling 
in the heavens, as ruling Oljmpus by his nod, as the 
common king and father of all. Ignorant men may 
have adopted the opinion, it may be embodied in fables, 
but it would seem as if the most learned people in the 
world had used the same language, and defended it on 
grounds of reason. 

This is evidently no idle exordium. Scipio wishes to 
account for the origin of kingdoms, and to show that 
however intolerable they may have become, there is an 
excuse for them in the nature of things, and that a state 
may revert to that kind of government f\dthout falling 
into a tyranny. There is a hesitation about the lan- 
guage, which was, probably, more characteristic of 
Cicero than of Scipio ; of the time which followed the 
assassination of Casar, than of that in which the later 
factions of the Republic were only commencing. But 
this very hesitation shows more remarkably what was 
passing away and what was at hand. The belief of 
a father of gods and men did, as Scipio intimates, lie 
very deep in the heart of the Roman commonwealth : no 
dread of the name of kings could extinguish it. While 
it lasted, they might rule beneficially, or consuls and the 
senatorial fathers might rule without them ; the law was 
observed, the unseen majesty remained. When it was 
shaken, the terror of an Olympian Jove would not be 
less strong ; it would not less clothe itself in fables and 
fiction ; but the whole character of the belief would be 
changed; it would, in fact, be a belief no longer; it 
w^ould be the horror of an oppressive God of nature, not 
the trust in a protecting God over men. And then it 



II.] ROME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. 267 

-would speedily enshrine itself in a liuman form. Not a 
fatlier-king, but a Divus Imperator, a god-general would 
come fortli, to turn citizens into slaves. 

Before this change took place, Koman Stoicism had 
tried what it could do to restore the state, and it had 
given the clearest proof how essentially different it was 
from the old character with which it had allied itself. 
There was more of that character in Brutus than, pro- 
bably, in any of his contemporaries ; a more genuine 
and earnest wish to uphold the forms and institutions of 
his country, at whatever cost to himself. There was, 
probably, more in him also of the domestic affection 
which had once made the Koman home so cheerful and 
o-raceful. But these beautiful relics of a former world 
must be adapted to that in which his lot was cast by 
being set in a stiff, artificial, pedantical framework. The 
Fate which he confessed, could not make a Eoman heart 
bow to the force of circumstances. It only made him 
rigid in his adherence to old maxims, unable to perceive 
what was demanded by the times he lived in, and 
wherein lay the best hope of something better. The 
genial government of the man who had most sympathy 
with the soldiers and people, — who, in spite of all his 
faults, had proved that he understood what Eome might 
do for ordering and forming rude nations better than any 
of her sons, — was intolerable to men who, if they had 
realized their highest dream, would only have produced 
a poor lifeless copy of a noble original; out ot whose 
conspiracy there came, in fact, nothing but factions, 
proscriptions, anarchy, and a readiness in their country- 
men to accept with joy any dictator, though he might 



268 ROME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. [LECT. 

have ever so few of the better qualities of the one they 
had lost. Had philosophy, as Gibbon represents it, 
been plotting the overthrow of the old Roman religion, 
that religion would have had its ample revenge in the 
feebleness of its rival to destroy a form of society or to 
restore one. As it was an attempt to reconstruct the 
old religion, everything being carefully preserved in it 
except its principle, the question more and more craved 
for an answer, whether in any way the principle might 
be ;asserted and shown to 'be immortal, though all its 
adjuncts should perish. 

That was not the question, apparently, which pre- 
sented itself to another illustrious Koman, who was 
equally removed from the academical scepticism of 
Cicero, and the republican stoicism of Cato and Brutus. 
The elder poets of Rome had been the conservators of 
its heroic legends, those who expressed its belief in 
divine friends and protectors. Ennius appears to have 
mixed some philosophy with his belief. Yet his coim- 
trymen honoured him mainly as the collector of tradi- 
tions concerning the life and growth of their city, and 
especially of those that connected it with the gods. How 
strange then is it that the first complete Roman poem, 
— the greatest, as many think, that Roman genius ever 
gave birth to, — the greatest of which it was capable — 
should be one in which the whole religion of the ancient 
world is denounced passionately, — it would scarcely be 
a paradox to say, fanatically ! Lucretius does not merely 
lift his voice against it ; he aims at the extirpation of it. 
The hope of accomplishing that object, of delivering 
mankind from the terrors of the unseen world, and of 



II.] EOME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. 269 

the powers whicli had Ibeen thought to preside over it, 
"bears him through all the amazing difficulties of his 
enterprise, enables him to discover poetry in the spe- 
culations of so frigid a 'thinker as Epicurus, to repro- 
duce dry arguments in free and living verse, actually to 
compel the language of his country, nursed as it had 
been in camps, to accept the toughest compounds which 
the pliable Greek had discovered for philosophical use, 
without destroying its native purity or strength. So 
remarkable an achievement would have been impossible 
if there had not been an intensely fervent purpose in the 
poet ; his mere genius might have struck out a number 
of much pleasanter paths. In fact, the main interest of 
the poem ' On the Nature of Things ' arises from this 
cause. However we may dislike his theory, we can 
scarcely help attributing to Lucretius a moral earnest- 
ness such as did not belong even to the best WTiters of 
the Augustan age. It is far more true of him than of 
the satirist of a later time, that ' indignation made his 
verses.' No describer of human battles is more pas- 
sionate, more thoroughly alive, than he w^ho undertakes 
to represent to us the war of the atoms out of which the 
world arose. He charges at the head of his tremendous 
Greek syllables, as men of the former day broke the 
phalanxes of Pyrrhus, or, amidst desponding trials and 
reverses, encountered Hannibal upon their own soil. 
Nay, strange as the assertion may sound, it is the 
ancient Roman feeling, which inspires him with such an 
intense detestation of the practices which had become 
identified in his mind with the religion of his own 
country and of Greece. His horror at the tradition 



270 EOME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. [LECT, 

respecting the murder of Ipliigenia is an indication of 
his reverence for that paternal instinct and duty, which 
Agamemnon abandoned at the command of the prophet 
who said that he uttered the voice of the god. In spite 
of his belief that the gods take no interest in men, he is 
continually invoking them and iriiputing to them per- 
sonal sympathies. His primary elements have more 
humanity in them, than many epical and dramatical 
poets succeed in imparting to their men and women. 
And every where some magnificent simile comes in to 
illustrate one of his philosophical maxims, which show 
what his heart was really interested in, whatever indif- 
ferent entertainment his intellect might be providing 
for it. Thus in his second book, when he is to illus- 
trate the doctrine that there are different kinds and 
forms throughout the universe which must be referred 
to differences in their original elements, he bursts out 
with a passage, delicious alike for sense and sound, 
which it is better to render into the rudest prose than to 
disgrace by a poetical parody. ' If it were not so, how 
' could the child confess its mother or the mother confess 

* her child, which we know they can do, so that it is 

* not only among men but in all creatures that they are 
' mutually known. For oftentimes before the splendid 

* temples of the gods a calf hath fallen, slain beside the 

* incense-burning altars, breathing the warm blood of 

* life out of its breast. Meantime the widowed mother, 
' traversing the green copses, leaves on the ground the 
' tokens of her cloven feet, visiting all places with her 

* eyes if perchance she may see anywhere her lost 
' offspring, and fills with her moans the leafy wood as 



II.] EOME UNDER GEEEK TEACHEES. 271 

' she stands gazing, and oft returns to the stall, pierced 
' through with the love of the young that is lost. Nor 

* can the tender willows and herbs fresh with dew, 
' nor the streams gliding along between their high 

* banks, avail to comfort her mind and avert her anguish. 

* Nor can all the other kinds of calves along the glad 
' meadows draw her mind away from the one or soothe 
' her care. So true is it that there is something proper 
' to each, which each perceives and asks again.' There 
must have been an exquisite tenderness as well as 
strength in the heart of a man who delighted to trace 
these sympathies through all nature, which he must 
first have learnt to know for himself. For the kind of 
attraction which he attributes to these animals, is not 
that which the pantheist sees everywhere as the sub- 
stitute for all human bonds and relationships. It is the 
reflection of these in a lower sphere. It is the mother 
and the child, not some magnetical affinity, which he 
perceives, * among the cattle and the wild beasts, and 
' the finny race, the various birds that frequent the 
' waters, and the fountains and lakes, and fly through 
^ the pathless woods.' 

Were the vulgar notion of Lucretius the true one, 
that he is the poet and philosopher of chance, attri- 
buting to it that which his more devout predecessors 
had maintained to be the work of a divine mind, 
such passages as these would be mere inexplicable 
inconsistencies. But there is not even the slightest 
justification for this opinion. Lucretius certainly felt 
himself that he was escaping from the region of chance 
to the region of order. It seem^ed to him that the 



272 EOME UNDER GEEEK TEACHERS. [LECT. 

popular mythology was built upon accidents and omens, 
and that there was no safety or rest but in the dis- 
covery and acknowledgment of fixed principles. How 
much he failed in the search for these, with what a 
grand Titania-affection he embraced an ass^s head, it 
might be easy to point out if it were necessary. But 
that he was in search of an order, and that the order 
which alone could satisfy his mind would have been 
one that is higher and nobler, not meaner and poorer, 
than thatAvhich those. speak of who think of the Creator 
of the world merely as a great artificer, must, I think, 
be evident to those who read his poem seriously. He 
craved for a Father of men, not merely for an Author 
of nature. Till he found what he sought, — or at least 
while he found such images presented to him, such 
acts demanded of him, as implied that the world Avas 
governed by no such Being as this, but by one alto- 
gether unlike this, — he preferred to deny a Providence 
altogether, to wrap himself in a theoretical atheism. 

If we pass from Lucretius to Virgil, the contrast is in 
all respects as great and startling as it can be. And 
yet, as I endeavoured to point out in my last Lecture, 
the result is the same. The reverent observer of his 
country's traditions, the man who will exercise all his 
native talent in reproducing them, who will make all 
his Greek culture subservient to the adornment of them, 
teaches us that very lesson which we have been learning 
from the poet who hoped to see religion trodden under 
the feet of philosophy, and who believed that it had 
been the instigator of the greatest evils in the world. 
What the one seeks to present to his countrymen, is 



II.] ROME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS, 273 

a hero whose only memorable quality is liis filial virtue 
and reverence, who confessedly derives that quality 
from the household gods he bears with him, they being 
in the higher region what Anchises is in the lovvxr. 
What the unbeliever craves for, what he curses his 
country's traditions for not showing him, is this same 
image. He will abjure them all ; he will meditate 
upon atoms, and their original diversities and attrac- 
tions ; he will refer himself and all things to these ; 
unless you can make him feel, that not in dead tra- 
ditions, but in living power, there is a Ruler who can 
explain why the maternal instinct is so mighty every- 
wdiere — why the power of the father had made his own 
nation so glorious — why, when that power was changed 
into a tyranny, his nation grew so weak and so con- 
temptible. Virgil was doomed to a greater disappoint- 
ment than Lucretius, for he thought he saw a father of 
his country and a beginner of a new era, in Augustus 
Ca3sar. But perhaps a clearer glimpse might be given 
to him than to the other, of a fatherly kingdom which 
would be as wide as that of the C^sars, if their legions 
were not to extend it, if their palace was not to be the 
centre of it. 

At all events, Marcus Aurelius may have had some 
good reason for reminding himself, — when his Greek 
philosophy led him to forget the fact or to wish himself 
something else, — that he was born a Roman. He was 
right in thinking that to be that in its fullest sense, was 
to be a great and noble man. He was right in thinking 
that only a religion which befitted a male, — which was 
strong, substantial, efficient, which was not sickly or 

T 



y 



274: EOME UNDER GREEK TEACHERS. [LECT. 

efFeminate, wliicli spoke of rule and autliority — could be 
the support of such a character. He had a right to ask 
also, that this authority should be of that kind which 
the Roman had confessed in his best days, should be 
that in its most perfect form, should prove what it was 
by fact, establishing its claim to obedience by tokens 
which men could recognise. He had a right to ask that 
wdth the manifestation of this autliority should be joined 
the manifestation of that ideal of humanity which the 
Greek had longed for. One of these conditions was 
certainly necessary, probably both of them, to any re- 
ligion that should preserve the empire from decay and 
ruin. Unless it were found, the Roman eagle might 
continue to be a bird of prey, but it would never mount 
up to behold the sun and draw light from its fountain. 



III.] EOME. 275 



LECTURE III. 

EOME AT THE BEGINNING OF THE NEW WOELD. 

In my last Lecture I commented upon a sentence 
wliicli occurs very early in tlie liistory of the " Decline 
and Fall of the Homan Empire." I could not easily 
have found one that was more characteristic, in its 
form or in its spirit, of that work and of its author. 
All religions, it said, were equally true in the eyes of 
the Roman people, equally false in the eyes of the 
philosopher, equally useful in the eyes of the magis- 
trate. There speaks the acute observer of a falling 
or fallen world, from that point of view which the 
eighteenth century afforded him. He a]3peared to him- 
self to be judging most fairly of the past ; he was 
really transferring to the past the habits and the 
despondency of his own time. The preface to the first 
volumes of the History is dated in the year 1776; the 
preface to the entire work in the year 1788. It was 
completed, therefore, one year before the breaking out 
of the French Revolution ; all the tempers and modes 
of thinking which belonged to it, are those of which 
that event was the climax and catastrophe. The people, 

T 2 



276 ROME AT THE [LECT. 

tlic pliilosopliers, the magistrates, in the different states 
of modern Europe, were thinking then very much as he 
supposes they must have thought under the Kepublic 
and the Empire. 

I "believe we shall not do justice to this eminent 
historian, or learn the great lessons which his work is 
able to teach us, if we approach it without this recol- 
lection on our minds. If I may judge of others by 
myself, it is not easy to express the magnitude of our 
obligations to him. We become more conscious of 
them, the more we endeavour to put our thoughts toge- 
ther respecting the long period which he has described 
to us, or to consider particular portions of it. We are 
not only bound to admire his patient toil, his faithful- 
ness in the study of documents which a large majority 
of his cotemporaries, and probably of ours, would sup- 
pose that he had no occasion to meddle with, and the 
power which he has of awakening our interest in the 
dullest subjects. These are very gi-eat historical gifts ; 
but the historical genius is more exhibited when a 
writer enables us to understand that heterogeneous 
events are connected, that history is really a drama^ 
every scene of which has relation to some centre, and is 
bearing us on to some issue. The melancholy grandeur 
of Gibbon's book remains with us and grows deeper, as 
we look upon any picture of the ruins of Rome, or 
meditate upon the world that has grown out of them. 
His solemn and stately style is felt, — even the more for 
its want of nature, of freedom and variety, — to be the 
proper garb for a funeral procession, such as he brings 
before ns and compels us to join. It is a majestic 



III.] BEGINNING OF THE NEW WOELD. 277 

spectacle to see Greeks and Gatlis, hordes from tlie 
steppes of Asia which Pompey and Cicero never 
dreamed of, the Moors of Africa, nations in all costumes 
and of all religions, joining in that procession and 
attending the fallen conqueror to his tomb. 

If one conceives of tliis as the object of our illustrious 
countryman, it does not seem at all strange that any 
signs of returning vegetation on the old and worn out 
land, any indication that there were virgin soils which 
were capable of cultivation, should disturb rather than 
attract liim. They were interruptions in his narrative 
which must be explained away, if they could not be made 
to illustrate its course and augment its gloom. The sports 
and the laughs of the schoolboy which Gray surveyed 
with such pleasure wlien he had a distant view of the 
old Eton towers, would probably have been rather 
distressing to his somewhat sensitive and fastidious 
nature and his recluse habits, if he had come into close 
contact with them. He would then perhaps have been 
reminded that those Vvdio urged the flying ball, or en- 
thralled the captive linnet, had not merely soitows in 
the far future of which it was bliss to be ignorant, but 
had their own present griefs and quarrels, their sins of 
violence and of fraud, which were as real and as 
intensely felt as any that could come forth in maturer 
life. The boyhood of nations must in like manner have 
been a very disagreeable subject for Gibbon. However 
brilliantly he may sometimes describe it, the noise and 
the turbulence must have been utterly ajar with the 
feelings with which he was contemplating the dying out 
of a society in the fulness of refinement and civilization. 



278 EOME AT THE [LECT. 

And all appearances of a new element in the decaying 
mass, everything which threatened to hasten its decom- 
position and to create something different out of it, 
must have been regarded by a man writing with such a 
purpose at such a time, angrily and impatiently. If 
it could be shown, — and how well might it be shown 
from undoubted records which had been unfairly con- 
cealed or disfigured, — that many of the worst evils of 
the old world mingled with that which threatened to 
displace it, and that other evils had been added to these, 
how eagerly would such facts be brought forth and set 
in their fullest, broadest light ! If it could be shown, — 
and what evidences there were in Gibbon's day to 
warrant the hypothesis, — that a principle which seemed 
in the second and third centuries new and immortal, was 
helpless, almost defunct, how naturally was that which 
would have been bitterness turned to scorn ; how calmly 
the narrator could aiford to trifle with what he thought 
was proving itself to be insignificant; what new force he 
could give to his picture and his moral by showing us 
that Roman greatness was not all which was destined 
to decline and fall ! 

I have complained of the judgment which Gibbon 
has passed upon the thinkers and actors of the old 
Roman world. I am far less anxious to refute his 
judgment of the Christian Faith and the Christian 
Church. If the rules of your Institution permitted me 
to engage in polemics for the former, I should decline 
the task, being convinced that if that faith cannot defend 
itself by appealing to the consciences of men and the 
facts of history, my arguments would serve it very 



III.] BEGINNING OF THE NEW WOELD. 279 

little. As to the latter, I am of opinion tliat Gibbon 
lias done more for it than most ecclesiastical historians, 
inasmuch as he has shown as they have not shown, 
what a substantive power it was in the world, how 
impossible it is to speak of the Roman Empire as a 
civil writer should speak of it, without taking account 
of the questions by which it was exercised, of the acts, 
good or evil, that it has accomplished. Instead of 
pleading for a greater liberty, in touching upon topics 
which have their theological as well as their human 
side, than his example would authorize, I shall neither 
venture nor desire to meddle with controversies, which 
he has judged it a necessary part of his duty care- 
fully to discuss. Nor can I be tempted to judge less 
severely of the misdoings of the Church, than he has 
done. In proportion to our estimate of the influence 
which it was meant to exercise over the progress and 
civilization of the world, maist we be inclined to indig- 
nation at its shortcomings ; an indignation that must be 
roused by many acts which he would have tolerated, 
though it may be mitigated by a consideration which 
could have had no place in his mind, that we have 
inherited the same responsibilities, and lie under a 
heavier guilt. Subject to that weighty reflection, the 
admission may be freely made, that he has rendered 
a service to Christianity by every faithful exposure 
which he has made, of the crimes or mistakes of her 
champions and patrons; that he has no further mis- 
represented them than he has misrepresented the course 
of the world's history ; that he had a right to be- 
lieve the success of their Gospel was owing to second 



280 HOME AT TPIE [lect. 

causes, if tliere was not a principle in it whicli could 
reform society. 

This observation leads me to speak of an historian 
who belonged not to the eighteenth century but to the 
first and second ; w^ho did not see from a distance the 
gradual falling of the edifice which it had taken ages to 
build up, but mourned over one tumbling column after 
another, with the earnestness and foresight of a patriot. 
Many would describe Tacitus as a much more melan- 
choly writer even than Gibbon. They feel that nothing 
was ever written so tragical as his Annals and his 
History, nothing which ever impressed them so much 
with the sense of gigantic power passing into weak- 
ness or a curse. I acknowledge at once that Tacitus is 
the Roman tragedian, that he has taken the only subject 
upon which a Roman could write tragedy; — not the 
sorrows of QEdipus or the crimes of Medea, but the 
' rushing into slavery of consuls, senators, knights,' the 
corruption of domestic manners, the growth of military 
tyranny, with the certain signs that it would be avenged 
by military insubordination. As Tacitus wrote from 
his heart, as he was a man before he was an historian 
or a philosopher, I admit also that he is more capable of 
inspiring us with the sorrow which oppressed him, than 
an easy man of fortune and of letters in the eighteenth 
century, devoting himself to the study of past events 
with ever so much fidelity and even interest, can pos- 
sibly be. But I cannot allow that Tacitus leaves us in 
the same despondency, in which Gibbon would leave us 
if we accepted his inferences as well as his facts. His 
picture of Rome itself may afford us no consolation. 



III.] BEGINNING OF THE NEW WORLD. 281 

As liis eye travels over the different frontiers wliicli 
legions are guarding, the prospect looks even more 
dismal. Noble specimens of an older time, like Ger- 
manicns, are soon taken off by the jealousy of the 
tyrant, after they have resisted the temptation to put 
themselves in his place. The miserable son succeeds 
to the throne which the illustrious father could not 
occupy. The pupil of the philosopher becomes the 
plague of the universe. But if. we turn from these 
faithful narratives to the ' Life of Agricola,' still more 
to the book ' On the Manners of the Germans,' the 
spectacle is altogether changed. The former may be 
chiefly valuable as a graceful and dutiful tribute to a 
father-in-law ; as a commemoration of one of the great 
men who were left in the most degenerate times. Yet 
it cannot be overlooked, by any Briton at least, as the 
most curious and interesting document respecting the 
kind of civilization which Eome, when her governors 
were honest, could produce in a barbarous province ; as 
authentic and valuable a testimony of that which she 
could not do, of her inability to raise up a national 
or a moral life, in the country that received most readily 
her discipline, her polity, her luxuries. 

The other book, which should be read in connexion 
with this, carries the moral much further. I do not 
inquire how far the statements of Tacitus are to be 
depended upon. I have heard an eminent Gothic 
scholar, a pupil of Grimm, say that the more he read 
the book on Germany, the more he wondered at its 
accuracy. But if Tacitus was as ill-informed as some 
have given him credit for being, if his book was as 



282 . ROME AT THE [LECT. 

much a romance as some of those which were written 
in the last centmy about the islands in the Pacific, 
I should still regard it, in connexion with what viQ 
know of the after world, as full of significance. No one 
can doubt that Tacitus saw in that country which 
E-ome had been unable to conquer, a power which might 
do something much more terrible in the way of destruc- 
tion, than it had done when it slew the legions of Varus, 
and yet which he could not view without a certain joy 
for its vigorous and youthful life. If you ask how he 
could take so much more pleasure in contemplating 
such a life than Gibbon did, though it was a far more 
portentous vision to him, I answer. Because he had that 
which Gibbon wanted. He understood wherein the 
nobleness of old Rome had consisted ; he saw how much 
domestic life, the reverence for fathers and for wives, 
had to do with it ; he had kept those sympathies warm 
in himself amidst all that was dull and cold around him. 
And therefore it was impossible that he should not 
hail these when he saw, or thought he saw, them reap- 
pearing in tribes ever so remote from Roman civilization, 
ever so unwilling to receive the Roman yoke. It was 
no treason to his country, it was the effect of his 
patriotism, that he recognised these domestic patri- 
archal institutes as the appointed and necessary elements 
of a human society. He would have led his country- 
men, if he could, to see the virtues of their own 
ancestors in those men who had as yet received no 
external polish, who were ignorant of the arts of life 
which the Roman worshipped, in which he supposed 
civilization to consist. Therefore it was really the love 



.Til.] BEGINNING OF THE NEW WORLD. 283 

for the old wliicli made Tacitus just to the new. He 
discovered fresh sprouts where all seemed to be dead ; 
he perceived that the family principle was immortal, 
even if Roman institutions which had sprung out of it 
were condemned to die. 

Mj object in this comparison will, I hope, be evident 
to you. Tacitus can be as little appealed to for contro- 
versial purposes, by a defender of Christianity, as Gibbon 
can. He had the vaguest impressions of what it was, 
of ^ its very name. The Christian body presented itself 
to him, as the most fanatical sect of that nation which it 
was necessary for Vespasian to put down, and about 
the institutions of which therefore it behoved Tacitus 
to gather what loose and fragmentary notices he could, 
from authorities not specially trustworthy. But Tacitus 
felt those evils of the Roman world to be the causes of 
its misery, and of its coming fate, which Gibbon re- 
garded chiefly as subjects for amusement, or as furnish- 
ing the materials for some unclean note. No one is 
so mag-nificent a painter of drapery as the Englishman : 
no one helps us to look into the inmost heart of the 
society which he describes, like the Roman. 

When we speak of the domestic life of the Romans 
during the Empire, it is very likely that our thoughts 
turn first of all to Pompeii, and the information which 
we have received from it respecting Roman houses. It 
is excusable and significant, that we refer so naturally 
to these indications respecting the private existence of 
this great people, that we scarcely remember there are 
any others, which do not belong to them in their civil 
and out-of-door character. Unquestionably the ordinary 



284 ROME AT THE [LECT. 

lloman in the time of Tiberius or of Claudius would 
liave taken the same view of things. The house 
would have meant for him, the dwelling, the hall, the 
chambers, the feasting room, the baths : ' What else,' he 
would have asked, * is a house but that ? How does one 
' differ from another, except in the richness or taste of 
' its outward or inward decorations ? ' And yet, within 
that house so decorated, certain persons still continued 
to dwell ; and they continued to speak,- — probably with 
more refinement than their ancestors, — a language which 
intimated by a thousand forms of expression, that the 
house did not consist of certain walls, but of beings 
such as tliey were, and that upon tlieir relations to each 
other it depended, whether it was a noble house or an 
ignoble and detestable one, whether it was to send 
forth Tioman citizens, or men like those Asiatics whom 
Rome held that she had a commission to subdue. The 
vulgar maxims implied in the use of these words of 
course were scouted; the words themselves could be 
used without any pain or distress, because the sting- 
had been taken out of them, — the sense of them was 
departed. But the sting had not been taken out of the 
facts. They remained good. The household, — that is, 
the persons dwelling in the house, — had the same power 
to make each other miserable, as when they knew 
nothing of porticoes and paintings. There could be plots 
among the slaves, rebellions of the sons, contrivances of 
the wife against the husband and the husband against 
the wife, anticipations of the death of the parent, testa- 
mentary frauds, poisonings, assassinations. All these, 
not only Roman satire but Roman history tells of. We 



III.] BEGINNINa OF THE NEW WOELD. 285 

are not left to the evidence of excavations ; domestic 
history is not fixed in relics of marble : it is written 
most broadly and legibly and frightfully in every book 
which has been bequeathed to ns, by competent and 
intelligent observers. Perhaps it may be written, too, 
in the book of nature, in the volcanoes which the luxu- 
ries of the Roman dwellings were not able to avert, and 
which carried them av/ay. 

It would, however, be a most rash and uncharitable 
thing to say that the people of Pompeii were sinners 
above all those that dwelt in Rome, as it would be 
a contradiction of history to say that the visible punish- 
ments which befel those that dwelt in Rome were less 
terrible than theirs. What are the annals of the palace of 
the Caesars from Augustus to Vitellius, but a laying bare 
of the domestic crimes of those who were called fathers 
of their country, and of those who were nearest to the 
throne ? What are they but accounts of the vengeance 
and retribution which followed their acts? If Nero's 
life was held to be the climax and consummation of all 
foregone atrocities, it was because his hands were dipped 
in the blood of his mother. If liis punishment was the 
greatest, it was not because he at last suffered mui'der 
himself, but because he was pursued by the terrors of 
conscience as none other had been ; because, in the 
w^ords of the historian, 'When he had perfected his 

* crime, its greatness became intelligible to him, and 

* so through the rest of the night, sometimes fixed in 

* silence, oftener rising up in fear and deserted of sense, 
' he waited for the light as if it would bring him de- 

* struction j' and because neither the apologies of philo- 



286 EOME AT THE [LECT. 

gophers nor tlie wickedness of tliat motlier herself who 
had drawn him into the hatefullest crimes, could hinder 
him from hearing ' the sound as of a trumpet and her 

* cries on the hills and from the sea.' 

In his beautiful narrative of this event, Tacitus men- 
tions another fact which is most illustrative of the time. 
Seneca was to employ his rhetoric and philosophy in 
extenuating the act to the Senate : ' but meantime 

* JSTero's friends went to the temples, and then, following 

* their example, all the neighbouring towns of Campania 

* began to testify their joy at his supposed deliverance 

* from treachery, by offering victims to the Gods and 

* coming in embassies to the Emperor.' The combina- 
tion is complete. This was the popular as well as the 
imperial religion of the time. When a great crime had 
been committed, the temples must be thronged, partly 
to put a different face upon it before men, partly to 
make it acceptable to the gods. The more terrible the 
enormity, the more need of religion to cover it or to 
make up for it. How certain was it then that this 
religion would spread and multiply under the Csesars ; 
that every day would cause it to be regarded as 
more indispensable ; that poor Stoicism, even with so 
able and subtle a champion as Seneca, should be 
quite unable to offer any substitute for the encourage- 
ments and the concealments which it afforded! Add 
to this the restless anxiety to know something of the 
future, the impatience of men who had nothing in 
the past or present to rest upon, at least to get a 
glimpse of what was behind that veil, were it never 
so terrible and hideous, and one may understand that 



III.] BEGINNIXa OF THE NEW WOELD. 287 

tliere never was a richer field for the priest and the 
conjuror to work in than that which this age pre- 
sented. 

And now came the fulfilment of that doctrine respect- 
ing the condition of the slave, which I maintained, on 
the authority of M. Savigny, we ought never to attribute 
to the Roman institutions. An eminent statesman, in 
one of the earlier debates on West Indian emancipa- 
tion, quoted the celebrated passage in the 6th Satire of 
Juvenal, which describes the punishments inflicted by 
a Homan matron on her slave, to explain what a system 
was prevalent in the Eoman empire at the time when 
Christianity appeared in it. I do not mean to express 
any opinion upon the inference which he deduced from 
the passage : but it certainly never can prove, that the 
idea of the Roman family involved these cruelties, or 
anv. ' So I will ; so I command : let will stand for 
^ reason,' are the words in which the lady asserts her 
right to do what she likes with her own. They are 
words which imply a time when law was despised and 
trampled upon, when the maxims of arbitrary rule, 
recognised in the highest sphere, had descended to the 
lowest. They could have had no place in a satire 
describing the foul abominations which this one de- 
scribes, if there had not been a protest in the Roman 
heart and conscience against them. 

That conscience was certainly never extinct And 
before Juvenal wrote, there had been a change in the 
condition of the empire, beginning with the era of 
Vespasian and only interrupted by the dark days of 
Domitian. Even those days were apparently profitable, 



288 EOME AT THE [LECT. 

inasmucli as they taught tlie people to appreciate the 
government of emperors who tried to be fathers, and 
taught them also to see how little they could depend 
upon the continuance of such a government. There 
was a kind of moral indignation against the crimes of 
Domitian and his officials which had not been 
awakened by the atrocities of Nero. The orator and 
the philosopher were then employed in finding a justi- 
fication for court-wickedness ; now the best of them 
mourned over it, and, when they could, exposed it. 
The panegyric of the younger Pliny upon Trajan, if it 
reads to us like flattery, Avas certainly a genuine ex- 
pression of the deliglit of a good citizen in discovering 
that it was possible for a ruler to feel responsible for his 
subjects, to regard them in some measure as his family. 
It was not that the abominations of the land ceased by 
magic, on the appearance of emperors having these 
dispositions : Gibbon's dream of the happiness of the 
world during the second century is scattered by a mul- 
titude of facts which his honesty would have forced him 
to record, if he had surveyed that portion of the history 
less rapidly. The influence of the better government 
was shown much more in its permitting free censures 
upon the state of society, — in giving us the materials 
for knowing how corrupt it was, — than in any real refor- 
mation. That itself, however, was an unspeakable 
benefit; the moral standard was raised; there was just' 
so much of light as enabled the Eoman to perceive the 
darkness : the Empire was so improved that j)atriots had 
courage to dream of the Republic. Above all, they 
could perceive that the dissolution of domestic man- 



I II. J BEGINNINa OF THE NEW WORLD. 289 

ners was the curse of all curses, whicLi the utmost official 
diligence, if it liad descended from tlie liigliest Euler 
to the governor of every province and to the centurion 
of every cohort, could not have removed. The later 
emperors of the second century were evidently much 
more deeply aware of this fact, than their more showy 
predecessors, Trajan and Hadrian. The nanje which was 
bestowed on the first Antoninus, denotes that he culti- 
vated filial piety as the chief of Eoman virtues, and that 
his subjects had discernment to see that in doing so he 
was entering into the spirit of the old institutions, 
helping to reviix the old life, and so doing more for 
his country than if he had conquered the Dacians, or, 
like Hadrian, had affected all Greek taste and cultiva- 
tion. Marcus Aurelius, v/ho had that cultivation, with- 
out Hadrian's pretensions and vices, used it expressly 
for the purpose of sustaining in himself and in his 
subjects, what he perceived to be the proper native 
character. Self-examination, an acknowledgment of 
the downward tendency in man and of the need of 
a divine teacher to raise up thtiL which was better and 
higher in him, resort to all the aids of thought and 
devotion so far as he knew them, were in his judgment 
the necessary means for enabling him to fulfil his 
duties as a son, a ruler, a father. 

And yet, with all his sincerity, the household of 
Marcus Aurelius was the most melancholy of spectacles ; 
the empire passed out of his hands to the most wretched 
of sons. The fact had been demonstrated, that there 
was no power left in Boman Religion, cultivated by 
the most honest and devout of its votaries, — in Greek 

u 



V 



280 . EOME AT THE [LECT. 

pliilosopliy, rescued from all its meaner adjmicts, turned 
to the most practical account, industriously and happily 
associated witli what had seemed most foreign from it, — 
to quicken and renovate that which every patriot, — that 
which Marcus Aurelius, the most consistent of patriots, 
— felt was essential to the preservation of the city and 
of the world. Thenceforth one hears of no such experi- 
ments as he made. The best emperors are only trying 
what they can do to enforce the authority of law by the 
help of the jurisconsults, and the obedience of the 
legions by severe schemes of discipline. If the Empire 
can possibly be kept from breaking to pieces by these 
instruments, the achievement is wonderful. The man 
who can avert an invasion or put down a rebellion, is a 
hero and deliverer, — one who is for a moment suspend-* 
ing the anarchy, which returns the next generation in 
all its fury, and in which all foresee that the state must 
at last be ingulfed. Meantime, those tribes whose 
character Tacitus endeavoured to study in the country 
which he saw furnished the most perfect specimen of 
an external barbarism with a root of order and future 
civilization, those tribes were beginning to measure their 
strength against the power of Rome, to see whether 
it was not a match for the most perfect discipline, 
as far as art went, when the spirit of discipline had 
departed. This is surely the meaning of that momen- 
tous struggle of which there had been so many fore- 
tellings, but which Romans understood to be one for 
life and death, from the time of Decius downwards. 
The phrases by which we often describe it, are certainly 
quite inadequate. When we speak of a battle of bar- 



III.] BEGINNINa OF THE NEW WORLD. 291 

Ibarlsm with civilization, we have need to define "both 
onr terms. They may be both vakiable, if we will give 
ourselves a faithful accomit of them ; they are both 
deceitful, if we assume that we understand them because 
we can make ready use of them. It icas civilization 
that was defending itself with the arms of Rome : but 
it was that civilization which the Annals of Tacitus, the 
Satires of Juvenal, the chapters of Gibbon describe to 
us. It was a civilization exhausted of its civility, a 
civilization with which the civis or citizen had no 
longer anything to do ; it was a civilization which de- 
manded all religious sanctions to uphold it, all religious 
impostures to make the different parts of it cohere ; 
a civilization out of which the religion had departed 
upon which Niebuhr bestows the epithets of sincere and 
veracious, — that which protected, as he says, the integrity 
of the people as well as of their institutions. On the 
other side there was barbarism, — all the vices of bar- 
barism, much of its weakness. But there was not 
merely, as we sometimes delude ourselves with think- 
ing, great physical strength and the capacity of enduring 
heat and cold. That capacity, which depends so much 
upon exercise and education, was greater in the hosts 
of Home than in those to which they were opposed. 
It was the treasure bequeathed by past times which had 
not been wasted, which every new occasion was again 
able to call forth. And if there was in some of the 
barbarians an unusual robustness of frame, that was 
owing, as Tacitus so clearly points out, mainly to moral 
causes, to the freedom from habits which were destroy- 
ing the heart more than the animal vigour of the 

u2 



292 . EOME AT THE [LECT. 

Roman youtli. It was tlie presence of tins heart, of 
this manhood, in the Germans and the Goths, of a 
principle of union not created by laws or accidental 
association, but derived from the sense of kindred, from 
the human relationships, that made them teiTible. And 
this feeling of kindred, which was liable of course to be 
disturbed by a thousand influences of individual selfish- 
ness and ambition, was upheld by the belief of divine 
powers related to the human warrior, of gods from whom 
the kings had issued, of helpers in the battle, of a Society 
awaiting them after it was over, of struggles going on 
in the heart of man and of nature with powers that 
were adverse to the peace and order of both, but which, 
through mighty conflicts wherein men and gods were 
engaged together, would at last be put down. This 
faith had surely in itself a meaning and a sincerity 
such as the early Roman faith had ; yet it was different 
in kind as much as in outward form and colouring from 
that. There was in it more of the sense of government 
and authority than in the Greek belief, more that 
craved for authority and would be ready to recognise 
it. There was an immeasurably deeper reverence for 
women, than even the stories of Andromache and Pene- 
lope warrant us in attributing to the Hellenic people. 
Still, the reverence for the hero, for one who unites the 
man with the god, much more brings back the race 
Homer describes, than that which bowed to the father- 
king in the Capitol. The Gothic faith contained no 
substitute for this. Unless it could in some manner 
blend with this, and be subordinated to it, one does not 
see what escape there was for the people who held it, 



Jir.J BEGINNING OF THE NE\y WORLD. 293 

from that brutality which degraded and perverted their 
nobler and manlier qualities. 

It would have seemed to be the business of Rome in 
the world to bring about this union, to stamp the image 
of its own paternal authority, and of that wonderful 
order to which it had given birth, upon those who were 
likely to continue for ever in a kind of wild boyhood, 
unless there were some to prepare them for the distinct 
purposes and steady work of manhood. But how could 
Home fulfil this task? She never, as we have seen, 
was able to exercise the kind of power over these tribes, 
which she had put forth with so much success among 
the Celts of Gaul and Britain. And supposing she had 
acquired that position, supposing she could have com- 
manded them as she did the others, what different 
materials would she have found awaiting her skill and 
discipline! How could she have taught them the 
lessons they were wanting to learn, when she had herself 
utterly forgotten them? Without these lessons, how 
would her superficial culture have been cast aside by 
the strong hands and stout hearts, which at last con- 
spired to take it away from herself ! 

If all religions were equally true for the people, 
useful for the magistrate, and indifferent to the philo- 
sopher, there could be no reason why, when the craving 
both for religion and for novelty was so strong among 
the people, when old religions were proving themselves 
so ineffectual for the purposes of the magistrate, when 
the philosopher was inquiring what helps he might 
find to uphold the feebleness of his theories and reso- 
lutions, a newer and fresher set of dogmas should not 



294 EOME AT THE [LECT. 

have proved acceptable to all three. Had Christianity 
presented itself in that shape to the inhabitants of the 
Roman empire, it need not have waited two centuries 
for Philippus Arabs to give it a brief recognition among 
the tolerated and naturalized religions of the empire. 
It might very soon have been permitted by the mild 
wisdom of Trajan, to cooperate with other insti'uments 
in keeping the world peaceable and submissive ; it 
might have been .allowed by Marcus Aurelius to take its 
turn with the lessons of various schools, by all of which 
he sought to regulate and improve his life. Trajan 
determined that it must be proscribed, and its professors 
pmiished ; Marcus Aurelius, in his double character of 
monarch and philosopher, ratified and carried out the 
sentence. Nor is it easy to see how men contemplating 
Christianity as they did, and anxious as they were to 
preserve the existing order of society, could have come 
to a different conclusion or adopted a different com*se. 
For these new teachers did not come forth with a set of 
manageable opinions and maxims, which might be 
balanced and compared with those that had already 
gained currency among thoughtful men, or been rejected 
by them. They declared that they had good news for 
men of all sorts and conditions ; for the slave as well 
as the freeman, in the provinces as much as in the 
capital. Those who proclaimed this good news spoke 
as energetically as Lucretius had done, against that 
whole system of sacrifices by which the nations had 
sought to conciliate their gods. They proclaimed these 
to be cruel, as he had done ; they sj^oke of them in the 
old Hebrew phrase, as abominations. But they did 



III.] BEGINNINa OF THE NEW AVORLD. 295 

not merely promise the student and investigator of 
nature an emancipation from this system, and the theory 
of the invisible world upon which it was based, — 
they offered that emancipation to the people. The 
ground of this emancipation was the very one which 
Cotta had pronounced to be impossible, unless, men 
were to give up boasting of their virtue, and claiming it 
as their own. The new teachers affirmed righteousness 
and the power of attaining it to be the highest and 
most heavenly gift; to be received, not procured; for 
the sake of which the loss of vineyards, olive-yards, 
health and life, might be well endured, — that loss being 
itself oftentimes part of the treasure. And. this message 
and gift were affirmed to proceed from a Father who was 
revealing himself as at the root of the universe and of 
the life of man ; of whom the Jupiter of the Capitol had 
been the phantom, and before whom he must disappear. 
It was not possible in any way to identify this Being 
with the world-god of Stoicism. He was declared to be 
the Creator and Ruler of the world. It was not possible 
to put him at a distance from the affairs of men, as the 
Epicurean did. He was declared to be the Archetype 
of which men are the image, to be conversing with them 
through One who was the elder brother of their race, to 
be acting upon them, governing them, reforming them. 
It was not possible to treat this message as a theory 
not affecting the conditions of social life. This father- 
hood and brotherhood were declared to be the foundation 
of a no less comprehensive society than the imperial ; all 
subjects of the empire were invited to claim citizenship 
in it. 



296 . ROME AT THE [LECT. 

Gibbon lias certainly not exaggerated tlie intrusive- 
ness and audacity of sucli a proclamation as this ; lie 
has greatly underrated it. If lie had fully apprehended 
itj he might have made a more successful if a less- 
ingenious defence of the Roman emperors than he has 
done. He might have called upon all equitable and 
reasonable Christians to ask themselves how they would 
have acted if they had been in the place of Trajan or 
of Marcus, and not to cast a stone at them for their 
persecutions, till they are clear about the answer. The 
more one considers the circumstances of that time, the 
further one looks into the past history, the more does 
one appreciate the difficulties of their position, the more 
clearly does it appear, that their private virtues and their 
zeal for the well-being of their subjects may furnish the 
most natural explanation of their policy. They could 
have afforded to despise any enthusiast or body of 
enthusiasts, that sought to bring back the old forms of 
the Republic. These had been tried, and had failed ; 
every wise man would have said, * What can we gain 
' by going round the same weary circle? We shall 
' return to this point again. Surely these Emperors are 
' giving us as free a government as we can bear.' They 
could in like manner have afforded to despise any 
system which was really, what the people believed 
Christianity to be, — atheistical. The worship of the 
Gods was so wrought into every part of the work and 
enjoyment of human life, it was so identified with old 
traditions, it so little disturbed any modern pleasure or 
taste, that there wa^s no apparent reason why the mul- 
titude should wish to be freed from it ; they had ten 



JII.] BEGINNING OF THE NEW WORLD. 297 

tliousand motives for cleaving to it, though no state 
influences were exercised in its favour. But a society 
coming forth in a divine name, — so like that which had 
commanded all ancient Roman reverence, so unlike ail 
that they habitually invoked ; a society speaking with 
the authority to which Rome had bowed when it was a 
village, assuming the universality of Rome now that it 
ruled the world, bidding men of all different hetero- 
geneous faiths confess one Father, and shake off that 
which separated them, had a far more formidable aspect. 
Wise men could discern that the insignificance of 
those who professed it did not make it less dangerous 
if it could stand its ground. That insignificance natu- 
rally tempted them to try whether it could measure 
itself against the power of the Empire ; whether it 
might not be shown by palpable proofs that the clear 
heaven which the Christian said lay behind that which 
was filled with the objects of the world's worship, — a 
heaven at the same time much more closely connected 
with the earth than that was, — had not been discovered, 
but only dreamed of. 

Upon the trial of this issue the conditions of the 
modern world were to depend. It is a mistake, I con- 
ceive, to suppose that we can trace the progress of it if 
we allow our minds to wander vaguely over the vast 
circuit of the Empire. But it would be a still greater 
mistake to suppose that'the Christian Church chose out 
secret glens and corners remote from the corrupt civi- 
lization of the time, for its principal achievements, 
and that it is in these we are to look for the decisive 
battles in which it triumphed or was discomfited. It 



298 EOME AT THE [LECT. 

was ill the great commercial cities, where the charac- 
teristic accomplishments and the characteristic evils of 
the old world were the most fully developed, that the 
new faith established its first holds ; it is in these that 
we ought to study its workings. The more minute the 
examination the better: I can but throw out two or 
three loose and obvious hints. 

Antioch is the city which we naturally think of first 
in connexion with the Christian name. It combined 
various elements of the old civilization. It was Greek, 
and born into the world at the time when Greeks were 
most eager to stamp their own image upon it. Yet 
Antioch was Syrian in riiuch of its temper and habit 
of thought. It was not unaffected by the colony of 
Jews which had settled in it, after its monarchs had 
ended their vain struggle to subdue the Jewish worship. 
Finally, the Roman proved here as elsewhere that he 
had a strength to which the most opposing tendencies 
and influences must submit themselves. Hither the 
Christian teachers came as soon as they had passed the 
limits of Palestine ; hence they went forth on their first 
incursions into the outlying world. Here Trajan found 
the society which taught him, that a kingdom was 
springing up in the heart of his kingdom which might 
undermine it. Here he perceived the necessity of 
removing the spiritual father, that the bonds of spiritual 
brotherhood which were holding together the Christians 
in the city, and connecting them with distant cities, 
might be snapped asunder. The event did not answer 
to his expectations. The bond appeared to be made 
firmer by the death of Ignatius. Divisions soon effected 



III.] BEGINNINa OF THE NEW WORLD, 299 

more for the object tie aimed at, than he could effect. 
Still the Society lived on, and grew stronger from all 
imperial experiments to overthrow it. The question 
had yet to be decided, what this Society was doing to 
alter the condition of Antioch Society. The records of 
the first two centuries afford no satisfactory answer to 
that question. The third suggests a more painful one, 
whether Antioch Society may not be doing much to 
alter the condition of the Christian Church. A Bishop 
in Queen Zenobia's time, probably patronised by her, is 
reported to be assuming the airs and dignity of a Roman 
official. But his flock is scandalized. Partly on that 
account, he is deposed by his brethren. A general 
persecution soon follows. Antioch bears her share in 
it. Then comes Patronage. The Eagle in the capital 
and the provinces has stooped to the Cross. Christian 
Doctors can lift up their heads and challenge the homage 
of those who have despised them ; nowhere is there a 
school of them more esteemed and more learned than at 
Antioch. It can send forth reasoners and debaters for 
the confutation of Heathens or Jews, or for carrying- 
on the controversies within the Church. But we want 
to know what this school is doing for the city in which 
it dwells ? The fourth century gives a very emphatic 
and a very sorrowful reply, from the lips of two men 
entirely unlike each other in temper, character, faith. 
The first is the Emperor Julian. He finds Antioch 
just what we know it to have been three centuries 
before, — frivolous, capricious, devoted to pleasure, with- 
out manliness, without heart. The testimony might be 
suspicious. Julian disliked Antioch, for Antioch dis- 



300 . EOME AT THE [LECT. 

liked Julian. But it did not dislike our otlier autho- 
ritj. John Chiysostom obtained the reverence and fear 
of its citizens by the nobleness of his life ; the bril- 
liancy of his speech made him popular in spite of its 
frankness. And the Church presbyter far more than 
confirms all the denunciations of the Heathen Emperor. 
We may learn from his discourses there, how depraved 
and ignoble the population, rich and poor, was ; the 
rich far more than the poor. That there should be a 
man to tell us so, — a man to declare in the name of 
God that it ought not to be so, — a man to defend the 
weak and uphold the mighty, and to feel that in doing 
this he was simply fulfilling the work which he and the 
whole body whereof he was a member had been sent 
into the world to do, — this is something to make us 
wonder and rejoice. But the fact is not less certain. 
This brave asserter of a fatherly and righteous govern- 
ment over men, makes it clear by his words that this 
belief had not penetrated into the heart of the people 
among whom he dwelt, and that till it did so, the city 
could not be reformed, could not be recivilized by the 
presence in it of teachers wise and good as he was, of 
the most accomplished schools, of the most complete 
ecclesiastical organization. This truth was established 
in the fourth century. It became more manifest in all 
the subsequent Syrian history, till that great crisis, 
when the armies of the Prophet, insupportably advancing, 
swept away that civilization, and bore witness that the 
name of a divine Sovereign in which they fought is 
mightier than all theories and speculations, mightier 
than anything but that name of divine ' Father ^^ which 



III.] BEGINNIXa OF THE NEW WOP.LD, 301 

tlie Arabian did not know, wliicli the Syrian had 
forgotten. 

The city of Carthage presents quite a different phase 
of civilization to this. Tliere the native Punic element 
had "been ntterly crushed, when the cry, ' The old 
* enemy must be blotted out,' went forth from the 
Roman senate and people. Then the language, institu- 
tions, education of the Latins took possession of the 
country . which had so long resisted their arms. All 
these had been carefully transplanted, and had taken 
such root in the African soil as they could take, before 
the Christian teachers came to sow their seed in it. 
Eminent men had watched the growth of that seed, had 
nsed no little pains by loud cries, and som.etimes by 
ugly scarecrows, to hinder the birds from gathering it 
up. There more than anywhere had been vehement 
protest against the corrupt Pagan practices, and against 
the meddling of Christians with them. There more than 
anywhere the lines had been drawn deeply and broadly 
between the new Society and the old outlying world ; 
there more than anywhere, had ingenious methods been 
invented, for detecting false teachers and exterminating 
them. By the third century we may hope to see the in 
fluence of these efforts upon Carthage and upon African 
society. A favourable time arrives, the Christians, 
under Philippus Arabs, are patronised and promoted. 
Cyprian, the Carthaginian Bishop, describes the result, 
— divisions, corruption of manners, the loss of discipline, 
manliness, faith. A persecution comes. Numbers, as 
might be expected, throw away that profession which 
they held so feebly; others make a compromise with 



302 EOME AT THE [LECT.' 

their consciences, and obtain credit for a crime which 
they have not committed. The pictm-e is a sad one. 
It is relieved by instances of fortitude and endurance 
to death ; by the tokens of the good which came to 
Carthage out of its sorrow; above all, by the proof 
Cyprian himself gave, in a pestilence which followed the 
persecution, that he had the sympathy of brotherhood 
with the heathen population, and could as readily lay 
down his life for them as for his own flock. Then 
follow endless debates and arrangements about the 
economy of the Church. When Constantine acknow- 
ledges it, he finds Africa beset by a schism which he 
must interfere, in vain, to heal. The schism gTows 
stronger through the fourth century. In the course of 
that century we have Augustine's valuable help in 
ascertaining what the condition of Carthage and its 
neighbourhood was, when he was growing into man- 
hood. The moral tone of the country, as he describes 
it, is miserably low; the schools are given up to a paltry 
rhetoric ; everywhere we have the indications of an ex- 
hausted falling society, only here and there any symp- 
tom of renovation. The heart and mind of Augustine 
were themselves at work in the years after he retm-ned 
to his native province, to fulfil these promises. But the 
Vandals were besieging Hippo when he died. Africa 
needed the terrible discipline they inflicted upon it. 
The wars of Justinian, by which they were expelled, 
thinned and wasted it ; they did not apparently impart 
to it any fresh moral life. The fate of Antioch was 
awaiting Carthage. The Mussulman was to draw the 
same moral out of both. Only in the case of Carthage 



111.] BEGINNING OF THE NEW WORLD. 303 

one side of the moral was more conspicuous. The Chris- 
tian teachers there, while they denounced, with righteous 
vehemence, the outrages on domestic life which the 
heathens perpetrated, had done little, except bj their 
denunciations, to assert its sacredness. They had done 
something to diminish its sacredness. They had allowed 
it to be supposed that the divinest kind of life excluded 
it; that relationships were precious as types of some- 
thing else ; scarcely precious in themselves. The country 
which had derived its civilization from Eome, wanted 
the very principle from which Roman civilization had 
sprung. The Christian Church did not vindicate that 
principle in its inmost circle. Could it expect to make 
Carthage understand its own cardinal maxim, while 
this method of enforcing it was neglected? Must it not 
look somewhere or other for the hand-writing on the 
wall, to declare that it was weighed in the balance and 
found wanting? Where could that writing appear more 
legibly and terribly than on the scymitars of the 
Saracens ? 

There is another city, far richer and more various in its 
history than either Antioch or Carthage, of which I need 
not speak, as a friend of mine brought a number of its 
aspects before you in the course of the last spring. I am 
only reducing his pictures into a few dull words, when 
I say that the Church in Alexandria was able to main- 
tain her ground against the philosophy which it had 
derived from Greece, even to match her policy with that 
of the Empire ; that she was able to boast of her heroes 
and martyrs ; but that she was not able to renew a 
decaying and putrifying carcase ; that she was less able, 



304 EOME AT THE [LECT. 

because slie was so eager to confute sages and "baffle 
statesmen, because she did not remember that she inhe- 
rited from the Jew the duty and the power of raising 
family life, and through that, national life, from the abyss 
into which it had fallen. I must, therefore, agree with 
him in regarding it as a blessing, not a curse to man- 
kind, that a better, truer, more manly and even more 
godly race w^as permitted for a "while to tread under foot 
the Egyptian, as well as Syrian civilization. 

It may be said, however, that these cities do not offer* 
a fair ground for experiment, seeing that they had 
already so stiff and stereotyped a form of social exist- 
ence. At all events, Byzantium is open to no such 
objection. It had no historical associations ; it was 
surrounded with no ancient and venerable Pagan 
traditions. It offered itself, by its magnificent site, to 
the eye of the first Christian emperor, as the fittest place 
of all to bind the two continents under one master. 
Rome, in the days of Diocletian, had already lost its 
dignity as the seat of the Caesars ; the contrivance of 
dividing the world under several Princes had failed, at 
least for the moment. What a glorious opportunity for 
casting aside the tyranny of the gods who had claimed 
the Italian capital as their home ! What an edifice may 
not a Christian monarch and Christian bishops raise 
on the foundation of the new faith ! They undertake 
the task. No skill or zeal or treasures are wanted to 
bring it to rapid completion, W^hat is the result ? The 
child is decrepit from its birth; has all the signs of 
advanced age in its cradle. It springs at a bound 
into the corruptions which other cities attain by gradual 



III.] BEGINNING OF THE NEW WORLD. 305 

accretions, "by a long process of degeneracy. The 
vilest parasites at once acquire a recognised dominion 
in the palace. Titles take the place of orders ; offices 
of relations. There is a complete system ; there is no 
life. No one thing cleaves to another by a law of inter- 
nal affinity ; only by an accidental, artificial attachment. 
What signifies it how you describe such a society as 
this? Who cares whether you denote the different 
parts of it by ecclesiastical, or civil, or military names ? 
They mean the same thing ; they belong equally to a 
huge Oriental despotism. You have, indeed, succeeded 
in making a capital altogether different from the old, 
divested of its perilous recollections. But the difference 
is, that all which spoke there, even in the darkest times, 
of internal greatness and strength and freedom, has been 
exhausted, — that the imperial falsehood has attained the 
consummation at which it had always been aiming, but 
which it never reached. 

It would be a mournful and utterly false inference 
from these premises, that during the 1,000 years in 
which Constantinople dragged on a precarious existence 
as a Christian capital, there did not come from it any 
noble men, any illustrious words and deeds, any trea- 
sures of thought and experience which the world could 
not have afforded to lose. All such let us cheerfully 
and thankfully acknowledge, wondering at the creative 
power which can bring life out of death, order out of 
that which appears to us worse than chaos. Let it, for 
instance, be always remembered how, before Valens 
fell in his battle with the Goths at Hadrianople, 
Ulphilas had gone forth as the teacher of those Goths 



306 EOME AT THE [LECT. 

wlio had Ibeen settled in tlie empire. He went to tell 
tliem what he believed and what he knew. There 
might be confusions in his mind ; there might be greater 
confusions when his lessons passed into the minds of 
his pupils. There they met various and dim traditions 
with which they strangely mingled, together with a 
fierceness which often turned them to its own purposes 
and imparted to them its own likeness. But anyhow 
they received that which they had most need of, and 
they received it, as they probably would not have done 
fi-om a Latin. Ulphilas would have told them first and 
phiefly, of a Brother of their race to whom they might 
look up with wonder and trust. The book he rendered 
into their tongue seemed all full of these tidings. 
And with that he put into their own Mseso-Gothic, 
words which travelled through the length and breadth 
of Europe, and penetrated into all dialects, and gave 
them a unity with each other, as they testified of a 
like unity between huts and palaces : ' Our Father, 
which art in Heaven.' 

This was indeed a mighty contribution to the Chris- 
tian civilization of the West. There were many others 
only less memorable. The gathering together of Roman 
laws by Justinian, — the architecture in which Byzan- 
tium instructed Venice and many cities not in Italy, 
— her scholars and antiquarians, who watched carefully 
over the deposits of past ages, if they could not create 
for themselves, — the final testament of her treasures 
to the Latin world, when she could no longer preserve 
her own life from the Turk, — must always be thought of 
with gratitude. But on the other hand, Constantinople 



III.] BEGINNINa OF THE NEW WORLD. S07 

testified liow little slie ever grasped any one of the 
great j^rinciples or institutes of Humanity ; how little, 
above all, she could ever appreciate a fatherly govern- 
ment. The sight of the hateful abuses of her palace 
helped more than anything else to inspire Julian with 
his hatred of Christianity, — to make him think that the 
old gods might be the restorers of the old world. The 
emperor and empress, and the bishops who executed 
their commands, drove the noblest and best of the citi- 
i;ens of Constantinople — Chrysostom — into exile. It 
was in her that the frightful spectacle was presented to 
mankind, of the most furious religious factions joined 
with the most utter frivolity ; the holiest names, at 
which angels are said to veil their faces, mingling with 
the shouts of the circus ; the same diabolical passions 
being associated with the one and the other. What 
true life, what higher civilization could come from such 
a religion as this ? It might be the shell of the highest 
truths ; but the kernel was gone out of it. It was a 
religion that had set itself in the place of Man and 
of God. 

We turn, therefore^ anxiously and earnestly, with 
some hope but more of fear, to that old city which was 
not built in a day, which did not rise at the wand of 
any imperial magician, but which appeared as if it 
were an integral portion of the old world and could not 
survive its dissolution. Has it been dissolved? Can 
it endure the revolution which is shaking not the earth 
only which it has ruled, but the heaven in which dwelt 
the objects of its adoration ? This is the question which 
men were asking when the hosts' of Alaric appeared at 

x2 



308 ■ EOME AT THE [lECT. 

tlie gates of tlie city, which they had to ask themselves 
again and again through all the convulsions of the fifth 
century. The answer at first appeared decisive. The 
Yv^estern world was seemingly hastening to decompo- 
sition, faster than the Eastern. The swarms which flew 
over the one settled on the other. Every fresh blast of 
the trumpet announced more clearly than the. last that 
the work of ages was about to suffer some tremendous 
fall. At length an event comes, which is scarcely worthy 
of that name. The light that has been flickering so longv 
bursting out for a moment, then growing feebler and 
feebler, dies in the socket. History amuses itself with 
findinsr a nickname for the C^sar out of whose hand 
the sceptre dropped. In bitter mockery he is called 
Bomulus Augustulus. 

The catastrophe seems to have arrived. In a little 
time the Ostrogoth succeeds. A fresh and vigorous 
race is clothing itself with the spoils of the dead giant. 
But is he dead ? Is not the pulse still beating ? Are 
there not symptoms, not of life only, but of strength ; of 
strength that may become once again mighty for good 
or for evil ? I do not now refer to the armour which 
the Goth is wearing, to the laws and institutes which 
he gTadually begins to find necessary for him. I must 
consider hereafter whether these were forged by him, 
or inherited from the Eoman. But another, stranger, 
more startling fact offers itself to us. The masters of 
the greater part of Italy do not make the old capital 
their capital. That is left to one who calls himself its 
Father. The name has been long heard : now that 
the Emperor is gone, it becomes THE name ; the power 



III.] BEGINNINa OP THE NEW WORLD. 309 

wliicli Eome claims as characteristic of itself. lu tlie 
deepest suffering and degradation this power makes 
itself felt. Gregory the Great finds Eome in an abyss 
of misery which it had never reached in any former 
age ; impoverished by the wars of Belisarius, crushed 
by pestilence, threatened by Lombards, hopeless of as- 
sistance from Greeks. By a government really fatherly, 
by proving that he does not value his power for its sake 
or his own, he lifts his country out of ruin. He aspires 
to make all the nations of the West confess the same 
authority. To a marvellous extent he accomplishes his 
purpose. A society composed of different tribes and 
races once more does homage to the ancient capital. A 
paternal authority is now, as at the first, declared to be 
the ground of its dominion. 

This is the fact to which I drew your attention when 
at the commencement of my Lectures I quoted the pas- 
sage of Pante which speaks of ^neas and old Eoman 
life as having some mysterious relation to the successors" 
■of St. Peter. I accepted the assertion. I said, I be- 
lieved we should find it to be true. I maintained that 
there had been a marvellous continuity in the history 
of this people, and that it was one which deserved our 
deepest study, for the light it threw upon the Pro- 
vidence which guides all nations, and the special help 
it afforded in understanding the civilization of the 
Western world. 

I am no more afraid to meet the facts which en- 
counter us at this stage of our inquiry, tlian those 
which thrust themselves upon us at the outset of it. I 
no more dare to suppress one portion of history lest it 



310 EOME. [leCT. 

should "be claimed as an argument against Protestantism, 
than I dared to suppress another, lest it should appear to 
reflect some honour upon Paganism. In all suppressions 
there is imbelief, there is sin, there is treachery to the 
maxims which our Christian and Protestant forefathers 
have bequeathed to us. They hade us go up to every 
fact, look it in the face, question it till it tell us what 
it means. So act the brave students of the phenomena 
of nature ; so must we behave ourselves in the presence 
of the phenomena which perplex us in the life of nations 
and of men. When we come first to the mouth of 
the cavern, there may rise up dark vapours ; confused 
sounds may be heard through them; when they take 
form as distinct words, the oracle may be ambiguous, 
bewildering, self-contradictory. But wait on as those 
wait who care to know ; watch as those watch who 
believe that the morning will come out of the darkest 
night. You will find that the answer proceeds from 
no mad or false priestess, but from the Spirit of Truth, 
who will Himself enable us to understand it, who Him- 
self will direct the fulfilment of it. 



IV.] INFLUENCE OF EOME AND GERMANY. 311 



LECTURE IV. 



THE INFLUENCE OF EOME AND GEEMANY UPON 
MODERN EUEOPE. 



The name of one of your eminent conntiymen is 
inseparably associated with the notion, that the Roman 
world passed away in the fifth century, and that the 
origin of modern society is to be sought for in the 
woods of Germany. I have no need to tell you that 
this doctrine has been strongly controverted in our day, 
and that the tide of opinion is setting in the opposite 
direction. The permanence of Roman institutions, their 
prodigious influence upon the life and society of the 
Middle Ages, have been asserted by the most eminent 
historical scholars of France, Germany, and Great 
Britain. The very forms of social life which Robertson 
traced to a Gothic source, have been said to bear most 
distinctly the Latin impress. 

You, I conceive, are particularly qualified to be arbi- 
ters in this controversy. Respect for your distinguished 
historiographer may make you unwilling to dissent from 
any opinion which had the sanction of his authority ; 
yet you, far more than we in the south,, have most 



312 INFLUENCE OF EOME AND GERMANY [lECT. 

practical witnesses in favour of the other theory. Your 
jurisprudence is so intimately associated with the civil 
law, that no affection for Saxon ancestors can tempt 
you. to disclaim your obligations to Rome. Those 
Ibenefits which it requires some pains and ingenuity to 
Ibring home to us, which we have thought it rather a 
part of our pride to repudiate, must he continually 
forcing themselves upon your notice. You do not want 
Savigny or Guizot to show you, that if Rome died with 
Romulus Augustulus, some of the most important of 
her rules and maxims are alive at this day. 

At the same time you may, I think, entertain a rea- 
sonable doubt whether the dogma of our century 
necessarily displaces that which prevailed in the last. 
So far as that was negative, so far as it intimated the 
utter passing away of the old polity and its effects, we 
may be content to abandon it. Possibly, we may go 
a little further. We may perceive that Rome was 
especially the land of institutions, that in the strict 
sense of the word, our venerable Saxon ancestors knew 
little about them; and that, therefore, in distributing 
our gratitude to those who have earned it, we may fairly 
give the former, and not the latter, credit for these par- 
ticular treasures. But, on the other hand, if we come 
to consider what institutions are, how any people become 
possessed of them, what they do for us and cannot do, 
we shall look with considerable suspicion upon some of 
the statements to which the recent school has given 
currency, highly as we may honour their facts and the 
industry which has brought them to light. We may 
turn with some affection to the other conclusion as 



IV.] UPON MODERN EUEOPE. 313 

p^'oceeding from a sound instinct, even if the premises 
from wliich it was deduced are not satisfactory. In 
M. Guizot's works on the civilization of Em'ope gene- 
rally, and of France particularly, one discovers the 
widest and most minute acquaintance with all the docu- 
ments that bear upon the subject, or can even remotely 
illustrate it, — a remarkable freedom from party bias, — 
a desire to do justice to all influences, from whatever 
-quarter they have come, which have contributed to the 
formation of European society. All the agencies of 
great men, of customs, of laws, of race, of religion, are 
fi'cely confessed, and their action and reaction upon each 
other clearly and beautifully explained. What one 
misses, I think, in the admirable picture, is precisely 
that primary element of civilization to which I have 
been trying to draw your attention in these Lectures. 
All these diverse conspiring or contradictory powers were 
at work to create something very real, something which 
all history bears witness of, something which is implied 
in the very existence of cities and polities, something 
which cannot perhaps be denoted by any better name 
than that which he has chosen. But when one tries to 
connect the citizen with the man, when one recollects 
that he was certainly a son, probably a husband and 
father and brother, as well as an exerciser of municipal 
rights, a holdeir of property, an artist, or a man of 
science, it seems to us as if this point had been over- 
looked, as if the accomplished teacher had thought it too 
commonplace to demand any special attention from one 
who was engaged in so difficult and complicated an 
inquiry. Not, of course, that he would not at once 



314 INFLUENCE OF EOME AND aEEMANY [LECT. 

assent to the importance of domestic life, or confess that 
all the other parts of life might be affected by the good 
•or bad condition of it, but that he never seems to have 
acknowledged these to himself as the root of all civili- 
zation, and all civilization — let it have reached the 
highest point it will — as irregular and tortuous, as tend- 
ing to destruction, and as needing a new start and com- 
mencement, when it has forgotten this origin and is 
contemplating arts, refinement, religion, without refer- 
ence to it. 

It is easy to understand how a great thinker, dreading, 
on the one hand, the idolatry of savage, — that is, merely 
independent or individual, — existence into which so 
many reformers in the last century fell, — dreading not 
less the notion that there was in the middle ages a kind 
of patriarchal life separated from the life of cities, which 
it would be desirable to reproduce, — should have made 
what appears to us so serious an omission. Look- 
ing upon his book as a protest against either of these 
opinions, it is of the highest value. But if it tempts us 
to think of that life which Tacitus has described, as 
merely savage, — if it hinders us from seeing that out of 
this life proceeded that which Rome could not give, and 
which alone made what she did give of any worth, — 
I conceive we are defrauded of a truth, for which the 
additional light we have acquired on a number of points 
is no sufficient compensation. Take away what we 
owe to our German forefathers, and our institutions 
would mean something altogether different to us ; 
they would have been imposed upon our nation, not, 
as they have, grown up with it, their bone and muscle 



IV.] UPON MODERN EUROPE. 315 

adapting itself to its inner life and outward occasions, 
strengthening daily witli use and exercise. 

What I said in my last Lecture in reference to 
Agricola and his influence upon Britain, will at once 
explain this distinction. The institutions which he 
introduced into the province, were as good as the wisest 
and most benevolent ruler could devise for those whom 
he ruled. There was no grudging disposition to withhold 
from subjects that which belonged to their masters. 
What Romans felt to be best for themselves, — roads, 
markets, magistrates, equitable administration, restraint 
upon crime, — they freely gave. The population was capa- 
ble of the boon; the Druids, who would have hindered 
them from receiving it, were swept away. In due time 
came Christianity travelling with the Roman legions, 
settling in the country first as a proscribed stranger 
and outlaw, finally as an acknowledged and honoured 
guest. W^hy did a society with so many pillars inside 
of it, tremble the moment the external buttress of impe- 
rial protection was withdrawn ? M. Guizot explains, 
that as the central government grew feeble and neces- 
sitous, those who held municipal offices in the provinces 
were liable to the severest responsibilities and exactions, 
— that it was therefore a privilege to be exempt from 
them, — that the middle class, which is formed by muni- 
cipal institutions, was enfeebled and almost destroyed. 
These, no doubt, are important facts ; a colony in this 
condition must be a falling one. But we Britons have 
felt that to continue a Province or a Colony, supposing 
municipal institutions had been ever so respectable, taxes 
ever so moderate, would have meant the never emerging 



316 INFLUENCE OF EOME AND GERMANY [lECT. 

• into the dignity of a nation, the never sharing in its com- 
mon sufferings and joys, its shame and its triumphs, the 
never being in the right sense freemen or citizens. We 
■have considered it is a cause for continual thanksgiving, 
that our civilization was swept away ; that our Chris- 
tianity was driven into corners; that a Pagan and a 
"barbarous race got possession of our fields and of our 
harbours. Why, but because these bloodthirsty men, — 
over whose coming Gildas the monk poured forth such 
wailings, while he confessed, at the same time, that the 
moral condition of Britain was utterly bad, that order 
and family life had perished, that it was the prey of 
continual tyrants^ — because this bloodthirsty people had 
the sense of kindred, a belief in the sacredness of rela- 
tionship's, an acknowledgment of divinities, such as I 
spoke of in the last Lecture, who were concerned in the 
preservation of these, and were interested in putting 
down the evil giants that were destroying the earth. 
'Was it not well, we have said to ourselves, to get these 
men fixed on our soil, whatever temporary miseries they 
might inflict upon it, because they were not effeminate 
colonists who submitted to an order which was forced 
upon them, reluctantly but slavishly, — gratifying their 
inclinations at the expense of law when they dared, but, 
on the whole, keeping the sepulchres fairly white, while 
the dead men's bones were rattling within ;— but men full 
of all turbulent and disorderly impulses, men, neverthe- 
less, panting for order, longing to find some real govern- 
ment that they might both obey and love, having 
already the pattern of it in the homes to which their 
hearts turned amidst all their barbarism, in the Gods, 



lY.] UPON MODERN EUROPE* 317 

wlio were at least more kingly and more observers of 
laws than themselves? 

This has been our conviction, and I do not think we 
are prepared to give it np. We may have pushed, it 
further than the facts permitted : we may have assumed 
that our law and polity could not have had anything to 
do with the country, which had ceased to rule us when 
tlie Saxons brought their wives and children here. We 
may have forgotten that four centuries of Roman occu- 
pation must have left the deep traces of themselves in 
every direction, as we know that they have in the 
actual soil and in the names of our towns. We may 
have failed to consider that the Saxons, rude men as 
they were, were still a tractable people, who recognised 
facts, and who, therefore, if they saw any Roman prac- 
tice, the reasonableness of which they could appreciate, 
which clearly did the work it was intended for, and 
which they could connect with their own more primi^ 
tive notions of fatherhood and brotherhood, would be 
likely to adopt it and remould it. 

But the discovery and confession of these mistakes 
will not hinder us from speaking, as we have always 
spoken, of the Saxons as the beginners of our national 
history. Though the phrase may appear to be chrono- 
logically improper, we are certain that it is radically 
sound. And it is not inconsistent with chronology, or 
with any facts whatever, if it be true, as I have con- 
tended in these Lectures, that the civilization of Rome, 
just as much as the Gothic civilization, had its starting- 
point in the household. For then it might surely be 
most needful that the household life and strength should 



318 INFLUENCE OF EOME AND GERMANY [lECT. 

be restored, before any of tlie gifts whicli Rome had con- 
ferred could be really available for us. 

It does not signify from what country we fetch our 
illustrations. I have taken England rather than any 
continental country, rather even than Scotland, not 
because it is the easiest and most obvious instance, — for 
in some respects it is the most difficult, — but because 
it brings so many of the questions we are consider- 
ing together, and submits them to so severe a test. 
The interruption of our earliest Christianity by the 
Saxon settlement distinguishes our history most curi- 
ously from the French, who became so much more 
closely connected mth the Church, after the invasion of 
Clovis, than they had been before. And it is idle to 
overlook the fact that our Christianity was recovered 
from a Roman source, that the Christian civilization of 
the Saxons began with Gregory. I cannot for a mo- 
ment doubt that the mission of Augustine in England 
was immensely furthered by that proclamation, which 
fell so dead on the ears of the Celts in Wales, or rather 
which called forth in them so much suspicion that the 
habits and practices they had received from their fathers 
were to be disturbed and set aside by a foreign autho- 
rity. Honest and even useful as the opposition of those 
earlier Christians was, it cannot be disputed that the 
name of a spiritual father went home to the hearts of 
our kings, their wives, and their people, and that the 
demand of obedience to such a one was responded to, as 
no mere announcement of a doctrine would have been. 
And this was because the associations with this name, 
the associations of hearth and home, were so alive and 



IV.] UPON MODEEN EUEOPE. 319 

vigorous in tlie Saxon race. When tlicir minds were 
awakened to feel they had to do with a mysterious and 
invisible world, no tidings could Ibe credible to them 
which did not connect that world with what they felt 
to be highest and holiest in this. Their vision of a 
spiritual ruler living hundreds of miles away over the 
sea, could not have been very distinct ; but it suggested 
the thought of that which was immeasurably higher 
and also nearer. The call to obey such a ruler having 
such a name, the news of their own connexion with 
a large human family, met thoughts which had been 
working confusedly in them for generations, which 
their mythology had sometimes kindled, often bewil- 
dered, but never satisfied. 

The history of the very gradual conversion of these 
Saxons is always intertwined with their national and 
with their family life, with the relation of the king 
to the subject, but with that as it grew out of and 
was interpreted by the relations of the father to the 
child, of the husband to the wife. A society formed 
in this manner was likely, when it sought to draw 
others within its circle, to follow the same method. It 
can cause us no surprise that our Missionaries of the 
eighth century, who went forth to christianise and 
civilize their kindred stock in Germany, should have 
spoken much of a spiritual father of Christendom, 
and should have held the Churches they founded in 
very strict subjection to his authority. But another 
fact must be remembered in connexion with this. When 
the rapid growth of monasteries and schools in England 
had led to a severance between the religious life and 



o 



20 INFLUENCE OF ROME AND GERMANY [lECT» 



tlie domestic, when kings had acquired the habit of 
exchanging the crown for the cowl, and the whole of 
that society, which had been grounded upon the dignity 
and divinity of human relationships, was beginning to 
treat them as a Greek or an Oriental might, that civili- 
zation was swept away even as the former had been. 
The old kinsmen of the Saxons came to reclaim the 
land for paganism and barbarism; in other words, to 
confer on it the very same blessing which was conferred 
on it when the first set of sea-pirates conquered it, — the 
blessing of a healthy manly growth from a real root, 
the blessing of being delivered from that which was 
becoming every day more artificial, spurious, insincere. 
I am carrying out, you perceive, the principle which 
I announced in my last Lecture. I cannot venture to 
speak of great events, like the Mahometan conquest in 
the East, like our own overthrows by Pagan conquerors, 
as if they were mere unintelligible breaks in the deve- 
lopment of the modern world. I am bound to regard 
them as indispensable to that development; as mon- 
strous calamities indeed in themselves, but as calamities 
without which one could not in the least understand the 
nature or trace the course of Christian civilization. It 
is the most familiar of all commonplaces, that we could 
not have had an Alfred without the Dane ; and that com- 
monplace ought not to signify merely that trials are 
necessary to bring forth a hero ; but that Alfred's work, 
as the restorer of the true Saxon life, — of that homely, 
manly, kingly life which joined the world without to 
the world within, the student to the worker, — was sub- 
stituted for that mixture of barbarism and efieminacy 



IV.] UPON MODERN EUROPE. 321 

wliicli liad divided the land between tliem. We see 
how a nation really grows, and how blessed are all 
those impediments which the providence of God raises 
to its over-rapid and tortuous growth ; liow merciful it 
is when it is obliged to spell out its elements again, 
to work at its hornbook, when it has been aspiring to 
lore for which it was not yet fitted, and which it could 
but acquire crudely and incoherently. 

These events may seem too national and isolated for 
a summary of European civilization. I do not think they 
are so. I believe it is by the progress of some particular 
people, especially if that progress has been apparently 
irregular, that we must learn the law which has been 
at work everywhere. I believe we might deduce, for 
instance, from the case of Alfred, some very important 
conclusions respecting the union of Roman and Teutonic 
elements, and respecting the Christian influence which 
was fusing them together in the mind of every monarch 
who was able to raise and reform a land, to make it 
conscious of its calling, to connect it witli the past, to 
prepare it for the future. But I willingly pass on to 
a period which manifestly connects us with the general 
history of Europe, and which illustrates, better perhaps 
than any other, the combined operations of those in- 
fluences which we often assume to be hostile. 

M. Thierry has given us a lively picture of the miseries 
which the Norman conquest inflicted on the old occu- 
piers of the English soil. I do not wish to dispute the 
truth of his sketch, or even to lower the colouring of it. 
I cannot conceive how a people, fallen, as tlie Anglo- 
>Saxons of the eleventh century certainly were, into 

Y 



322 INFLUENCE OF ROME AND GERMANY [lECT. 

feebleness, strife, and sottislmess, could liave escaped 
tlie severest punishments, either at their own hand, or 
from some external invader. But if these brilliant 
narratives were to suggest the thought that the conquest 
was not on the whole an inconceivable blessing to Eng- 
land, — that it did not organise the form of society which 
was needful for the land then and for its after growth, 
— that it did not give us national consistency as distinct 
from the rest of Christendom, and yet at the same time 
bring us into fellowship with the rest of Christendom, — 
that it did not open to the native Saxon a pathway 
to ultimate greatness, which he could never have found 
if he had been left to the quiet possession of his lands, 
• — I must steadily protest against them as at variance 
with facts still more important than those upon whicli 
they have been grounded. 

There are many aspects of the subject ; I can but 
glance at one. It was natural enough that English 
annalists should speak of the feudal system, as belong- 
ing to the Norman Conquest, as even the creation 
of William. Strangely as that doctrine was opposed 
to notorious passages in the past European history, 
it had so much justification from the change which 
took place in the condition of the English proprie- 
tors, that even accomplished writers unawares encou- 
raged it. Eobertson, by referring to the customs 
which governed the distribution of lands, wherever the 
chiefs of the tribes who broke up the Eoman empire 
settled, made all his readers feel that the special 
circumstances of England had called no new scheme of 
society into existence. Eoman antiquarians, going 



IV.] UPON MODERN EUROPE. 323 

further back still, liave shown that the soldiers of the 
Empire, and even of the Republic, to whom conquered 
lands were assigned, held them upon a tenure not 
different in kind from the feudal tenure. The more 
one reflects upon these different observations," and seeks 
to combine them, the more one feels that these arrange- 
ments followed a law of which Romans and Germans 
were alike the unconscious asserters and administrators ; 
a law which proceeded from no arbitrary will, though a 
strong will might be needed to give it effect; a law 
which was, in fact, the restraint, the only possible 
restraint, upon the outbreaks of arbitrary power ; a law 
which, more than any other, distinguishes the condition 
of the Western from that of the Eastern world. How- 
ever one may dwell upon the incidents of the feudal 
system, it is impossible not to see that at the basis 
of it there was an acknowledgment of relationships, 
beginning from the highest lord and descending to 
the weakest vassal, — a chain of inter-dependencies, 
grounded upon the idea of the family, transferred 
from it to the camp, affecting through both the con- 
ditions of civil life. M. Guizot is no doubt perfectly 
right, in saying that this feudal order is not itself 
civilization. It is antecedent to the growth of cities, 
and may do much to check their growth. Yet we have 
no reason to think that in the Western world cities 
could have come into existence without it ; we have 
every reason to think that their existence would have 
been a capricious and unhappy one when severed from 
this foundation. 

Those two memorable centuries, the eleventh and 
twelfth, which include the period of strictly Norman 

Y 2 



324 INFLUENCE OF EOME AND GERMANY [LECT. 

domination in England, are those from wliicli one is to 
learn how the feudal and the Christendom life were 
related to each other, the abuses to which each was lia- 
ble, the benefits which each bequeathed. They are the 
centuries in which the Normans exhibit their ancient 
spirit of adventure, no longer as pirates of the sea, but 
as the soldiers of Europe ; as men united in a common 
bond with all the nations of the West, pledged to fight 
the battles of the West. It is the age in which those 
Normans went forth to drive the Greeks out of Italy ; 
were themselves threatened by an Italian conspiracy, 
•of which Leo IX. was the head ; vanquished him, and 
submitted to him as their spiritual lawgiver and parent. 
They are the centuries in which the successor of 
Leo IX., Hildebrand, put forth the claim to be the 
spiritual father of the world in broader and clearer lan- 
guage than his predecessors had ever used, and on the 
.strength of it asserted his right to set his foot upon the 
Jieck of kings. They are the centuries of the Crusades 
and of the Military Orders. They are the centuries in 
which Monasteries had greater power over Europe, than 
they ever had before or have had since. They are the 
centuries in which Latin more completely asserted 
itself as the one language of thought in the West, than, 
it ever did before or has ever done since. They are the 
centuries in which even the strong Saxon tongue yielded 
to this conqueror in the schools, as it yielded to the 
Xorman conqueror in the law courts. These are evi- 
dently all indications of the same class and kind. They 
are not merely contemporaneous as historical events ; a 
common historical principle is denoted by them. Surely 
we are not WTong if we say that this common principle 



.IV.] UPON MODERN EUROPE. 325 

is the one wliicli we found in the very cradle of Eoman 
life, which appeared to strengthen with its strength and 
became weaker with its weakness, the principle of the 
authority of the father, the principle of all social life 
as connecting itself with this, as unfolding itself out of 
this. Take any one of the points I have alluded to ; 
do not merely glance at the surface of the story, but 
look into the heart of it, and see whether it does 
not bear witness of the same truth. How is it that 
William, who maintains his own will against the world, 
who does not submit to any practical interference 
with his dominion, nevertheless acknowledges that 
enormous 'claim of Hildebrand, — never thinks of dis- 
puting that there is such a father, to whom kings must 
bow ? Evidently he feels that without such an autho- 
rity, wherever it is lodged, the chain of mutual inter- 
dependence is broken. He can exact no homage unless 
he renders it. There must be some reserved authority 
beyond his own, spiritual and mysterious, but after all 
fatherly, or his own will be a tyranny, and be regarded 
as a tyranny. Despot as he is, we feel how vast a 
difference there was between him and his successor, 
a difference affecting all their relations to their subjects. 
It clearly consisted in this : that the one had the sense 
of responsibility to some power which he could not 
measure by material rules and maxims, that the other 
counted such a power to be a mere dream ; what was 
not material, was for him nothing. Hence the scholar 
was utterly contemptible in his eyes. He could some- 
times look with a clear humorous gaze into false pre- 
tensions, but the wisest and devoutest man was just as 



326 INFLUENCE OF ROME AND GERMANY [lECT, 

odious to liim as the hypocrite. Each monarch of our 
Norman dynasty, down to the last, under whose reign 
all relations were loosened, all invisible power dis- 
dained, and mere physical strengths measured them- 
selves against each other, illustrates what there was in 
those fierce knights and kings which was ready to break 
out to the destruction of the land and of themselves, 
and also what an order there was hemming them in on 
every side, what a restraining power of bonds and 
affinities and responsibilities, all derived from the family 
principle, from the sense of a fatherhood which they 
themselves were to exhibit, and of a higher father- 
hood to which they must stoop. 

Look again at the Crusades. See how mighty the 
Military Orders were, when they wxnt forth in the 
strength of this mutual relationship, confessing a fatherly 
authority in their own superior, and a higher fatherly 
authority over the whole of Christendom, — how much 
this called forth all the other virtues which they dis- 
played ; and how utterly detestable they became, what 
plagues to every nation, when the sense of this bond 
deserted them, — nothing but the com*age which it had 
awakened, and the arms which that courage enabled 
them to turn to mischief and crime, being left to them. 
Look again at the Monasteries. Their effect upon 
European civilization no one gainsays. The monks did 
unquestionably drain lands and till them, bring gardens 
out of a waste, teach and subdue brutal natures. The 
names of fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, were inse- 
parably intertwined with their thoughts and their 
energies. In these names, while they had any reality, 



IV.] UPON MODERN EUROPE. 327 

tliey exercised influence and dominion ; the moment 
tliey "became dead names, the Order became corrupt ; 
those who had established it mourned over it ; those 
who had bowed to it mocked it. Carry the examination 
a little higher. Reflect on the acts of the different 
Popes, from Hildebrand onwards to the middle of the 
eleventh centmy. Judge them just as they were ; 
* Nothing extenuate, or set down aught in malice.' See 
how the best men in Europe, such men as Anselm, fled 
to their authority as a refuge from the tyranny of 
monarchs, and stoutly and earnestly maintained their 
allegiance to it, even to the sacrifice of their civil duty, 
not from selfish and ambitious motives, but to their own 
exceeding loss and suffering, really deeming that this was 
a protection for the poor and a witness against the force 
of arms. And then read the account of what they found 
when they came into direct contact with this fatherly 
government, of the intrigues and venality which pre- 
vailed at the sacred See, of the immense difficulty which 
they had in recognising the thing and the person they 
were looking for. Read the address of Bernard to his 
pupil Eugenius III. at the beginning of his treatise 
*■ De Consideratione,' and observe how the reverence 
for the man to whom he bows with the most filial 
affection, alternates Avitli wonder how one living amidst 
such a crowd of parasites and suitors, in such a web 
of complicated worldliness, should have any leisure for 
thought, any time to seek refreshment for his moral 
life. Read the conversation between John of Salisbury, 
the devoted friend of Becket, the antagonist of Henry II., 
with his old friend Adrian IV., and hear how plainly 



Q 



28 INFLUENCE OF EOME AND GERMANY [lECT. 



lie tells liim that Chnrclimen generally looked upon 
Rome as tlie sponge Avliicli was drawing all their life 
"blood to itself. Put these two opposing sets of facts 
together, and then judge how wonderfully that belief 
of a fatherhood for Christendom was sustaining itself, 
against contradictions scarcely less overwhelming than 
those which assailed the early Homan, when he clung 
with such tenacity to the faith of a fatherhood over the 
city. 

If we distinguish the Roman from the German 
civilization, I have a right, after what I have said, to 
connect the general European history of tins period 
with the former rather than with the latter. There was, 
it is true, even at this time, even where the Christendom 
spirit was most distinguished from the national, an im- 
pulse which drew men's thoughts away from Rome and 
fixed them upon Jerusalem. The influence of that coun- 
teraction should never be overlooked by the student of 
these centuries ; it was wider and deeper than either the 
ordinary civil or ecclesiastical historian has perceived ; 
it suggested continually the thought of a centre which 
was, at all events, not in the West. It brought out 
a sense of direct allegiance to One, who was higher 
than all popes, and of whose power the sepulchre wit- 
nessed more than the palace. But this does not affect 
the other assertion, that the properly Teutonic and 
national life, if not suspended, was at least overshadowed 
during these centuries. The German emperors were of 
course maintaining their fight against the popes ; but 
the imperial feeling was fm*ther removed from the 
national, — was, on the whole, more hostile to it, — than 



IV.] UPON MODERN EUEOPE. 329 

the papal. Between them lay, alternately the victims and 
the allies of one or the other, those Italian cities whose 
records form so interesting and so melancholy a chapter 
in the history of modern civilization. Civilized they 
■were, in the strictest sense of the word. The city had 
attained all the refinement, the subtlety, the eagerness 
for political experiments, which belonged to the old 
republics of Greece. But the ground of the civic life, 
the family hereditary feeling, had become only a part of 
it, — only, therefore, an excuse for those factions which 
were ever mixing themselves with theories and maxims 
of government, and disturbing the peace of society. It 
is wonderful how much interest Ave are able to feel in 
conflicts, so stained with selfishness and crime as these 
are. It is, that we are sure there is a principle 
w^iich is greater and deeper than the combatants knew 
of, one connecting the turbulence of factions with the 
freedom of Italy, and that with all the mystery of 
human crime and punishment and blessedness; that the 
union which the Florentine patriot perceived and em- 
bodied in his great poem between his individual affection, 
the sorrow^s of his own land, and the purpose of God 
for the universe, was not an imaginary but a real one 
for himself and for every one that tried to realize it. 

The struggles of these Italian cities enable us to 
understand, and appreciate more thankfully, the steps 
by which our own towns acquired their national position 
and dignity. It is they which offered that new and 
better path to greatness which I spoke of, for our Saxon 
population; in them they learnt the meaning of their 
old privileges, the sacredness of their old municipal 



330 INFLUENCE OF EOME AND GERMANY [LECT. 

freedom. The charters of the monarchs did not so 
much give them rights, as enable them to re-assert those 
which had Ibeen always latent in their constitution. 
They found that in their unions, as tradesmen, they 
could accomplish more than in their separate existence, 
as landowners ; the skill of handicraftsmen was deve- 
loped in them ; they worked together as they had never 
worked in the days before the Norman ascendency ; 
they became the middle class of England. They began 
to feel, that if they were not the head of the nation, 
they were at least its heart. They could, vindicate it 
once more as their nation ; they could prove that the 
Saxon tongue had never died, that it had only been 
strengthening itself with Norman and Latin grafts, and 
that it was stronger and more living than ever, more 
capable of expressing great thoughts and recording- 
noble deeds. But this, which was our civilization, though 
it was altogether different from that feudal life which 
preceded it, though it rose up as a contrast to it and 
counteraction of it, had a wonderful affinity with its 
principle. We must not forget that the trading bodies 
in our towns were called fraternities — that the feeling of 
brotherhood, if it was derived from the monasteries, 
yet penetrated into the heart of these manufacturing 
communities, and gave the form to their municipal in- 
stitutions. The name, no doubt, became limited by 
trade notions ; it was often confined to those who did a 
particular kind of work. They might be rivals to those 
who did another work ; there might be divisions between 
men of tlie same craft, opposing societies within it; 
there might be plentiful jealousies in each. Still, so 



.IV.] UPON MODERN EUROPE, 331 

far as there was order, as there was civility, this name 
expressed the ground and the support of it. Only so 
far as this name suggested its primary meaning, did 
this class become a powerful and united one, able to 
show that the burgher might do as much as the noble 
or the knight, in maintaining the unity as well as the 
freedom of the land. 

And it must be remembered, that the burgher was 
a plain man who did not care for metaphors. A father 
meant a father to him, a brother a brother. There was 
a general comprehensive use of the words, which he held 
to be real and sound. But there was also a special and 
natural application of them. In his mind the one must 
always keep up its connexion with the other. The 
actual family with its actual relations must be main- 
tained. Any thing which assumed relationship and 
made light of this, he soon learnt to regard with in- 
difference, even with hostility. The monk and the 
friar, therefore, however they might be endured by the 
highest class, reverenced by the lowest, were always 
viewed by him with something of jealousy and aversion. 
For the upper clergy, as removed from sympathies 
with common life, he had little regard; the secular 
clergy, the parsons of the towns, were his guides and 
teachers. They were English, and grew more English 
by their association with him. He forgave them for 
being celibates ; but he could not understand why such 
a restriction had been imposed on them, and regarded 
with suspicion and dislike those who had invented it. 

I am describing a class which you will at once 
recognise as belonging both to England and Scotland, 



332 INFLUENCE OF KOME AND GERMANY [lECT. 

tlie class wliicli sympathised wifh the movement of 
Wycliffe and received his translation of the Bible as 
their book, dear to them as the pledge of their national 
existence, the witness that a divine voice was speak- 
ing directly to them and their kings, not at second- 
hand through any vicegerent. But indications similar 
to these, though not the same, were to be seen in all the 
Teutonic nations during the fourteenth century ; adapt- 
ing themselves to the previous habits and feelings of 
the countries in which they arose ; everywhere having 
the same origin, giving rise to the same murmurs, leading 
onwards to the same results. The trade fraternities, — 
the awaking in them of a peculiarly domestic feeling and 
a peculiarly national feeling, — their conspiracy against 
the hierarchy which boasted of being universal, — these 
belong, at least, to all the northern nations of Europe 
at this period ; under certain considerable modifications, 
probably to the Latin nations also. But from the 
character of the movement, it must be contemplated in 
each separate country ; the attempt to represent it as I 
did the Christendom movement of the former time, 
must fail. 

In the fifteenth century the scene is changed. Then 
we see again a general European impulse at work ; but 
at work in the Latin countries more than in the Teu- 
tonic, among the scholars far more than among the 
people. It is apparently an impulse, even a vehement 
impulse, towards reformation. The great Latin councils 
cry out that there is corruption both in the head and in 
the members. They undertake to set things right by 
such means as they know of, arguing about maxims of 



IV.] UPON MODERN EUEOPE. 333 

ecclesiastical and state government, drawing wonderfully 
subtle distinctions, ready to make strong decrees, though 
there is some danger that the one of to-day may con- 
tradict that of yesterday. What it strikes one that the 
learned doctors of these councils have not discovered, is, 
that the corruption which they saw appearing both in 
head and members, was a corruption of the blood, which 
no amputation of limbs, no substitution of the best and 
most flexible wooden or cork limbs for those which 
should be cut off, was likely to remove. A deep, per- 
vading, penetrating immorality in ecclesiastics as much 
as in laymen, — a low, grovelling moral habit, which was 
worse than the acts that proceeded from it, — these pre- 
sent themselves to every student of that period, and if 
he is a true and earnest man, make him loathe the con- 
troversies relating to external arrangements, which might 
have been altered and re-altered a thousand times, and 
left society just as it was before. 

It is not w^onderful that men have turned with satis- 
faction from this spectacle, to observe that other Euro- 
pean movement of the time, which we describe by the 
name ' Revival of Letters.' It is not wonderful that 
Popes and dignified ecclesiastics, if they had some 
human sense and feeling, even though they had not the 
distinct political object of diverting men's thoughts from 
evils that were palpable and that seemed incapable of 
redress, should have thrown themselves eagerly into this 
movement, willingly forsaking the ecclesiastical ques- 
tions for its sake. We have been wont to say that, 
in taking this course, they were doing their very best 
for the civilization of Europe. Eecent writers have 



334 INFLUENCE OF HOME AND GERMANY [LECT. 

somewliat vehemently contradicted tliat opinion, main- 
taining that the civilization which they were promoting, 
was at all events Pagan and not Christian, — that all 
which had been strong and Christian in the previous 
times, must now give way to the classical, — that the 
Greek and Roman standard of heroism was to displace 
the saintly ideal. Very strong feelings and very able 
intellects are enlisted on both sides in this strife. It is 
one which no person must omit to take notice of, who 
ventures to speak on the subject of these Lectures. But 
I am afraid that if I enter upon it, I must give almost 
equal offence to each party. I cannot fall down and 
worship Nicholas V. or Lorenzo the Magnificent, or 
Leo X. I can as little bring myself to regret the 
revival of Latin scholarship and Greek art, or not to 
hail it as a very great step forwards in the divine and 
moral education of the West. I cannot think that a 
mere dilettantism and refinement, which satisfied no one 
of the great national impulses that had been awakened 
in the fourteenth century, which did nothing whatever 
for the elevation of the mind of the people, w^hich 
scorned the idea of liberty and popular life, which tole- 
rated the basest intrigues and the darkest vices, which 
concealed them, apologised for them, and allied itself 
with them : I cannot conceive that this is a thing which 
brave men are bound to admire, or which they can dare 
to speak of, as if it had borne any great fruits for man- 
kind. But on the other hand, I must think that this 
dilettantism, poor and contemptible in itself, was dis- 
covering or at least polishing weapons that were destined 
to do mighty service for mankind, and partly by work- 



IV.] UPON MODERN EUROPE. 335 

ing out its own destruction. Call tlie old literature 
Classical or Pagan, or what you please, but it was a 
literature that spoke of national life and energy, of 
polities that were based upon principles and not upon 
plots, of statesmen who were first men, of states that 
were called into being by a divine voice and which 
asserted their origin by the vengeance and fall which 
overtook the human rulers who supposed they could 
fashion the world at their pleasure. This literature, 
with all its corruptions, spoke more clearly and dis- 
tinctly of domestic life as lying at the foundation of 
civil polity, than any monk, however high his ideal 
might be, had been able to speak. No doubt, these 
principles were so mixed with what contradicted them, 
that they needed some light to explain their meaning 
and clear away their perplexities. The new philology, 
in bringing the Scriptm-es out of the dust of the schools 
and setting forth their living, domestic, national records, 
— where all is clear, free, inartificial, earthly because 
heavenly, human because divine, — in contrast with the 
learned commentaries and popular legends, provided 
that light, sufficient for the guidance of the wayfarer 
who had none of the other lore, the revealer of its 
meaning and worth to those who had it. And there- 
fore, though they thought it not, neither did it come 
into their minds, I believe those who patronised the 
new literature and the new art were doing much for 
that highest and truest civilization, which is not apart 
from national and domestic life, but of which they are 
the sources and guardians. If Raphael fell, as we are 
told he did, below elder painters in his standard of 



336 INFLUENCE OF EOME AND GERMANY [LECT. 

devotion and holiness, I must think, without pretending 
to any knowledge of the subject, that he was not only 
more perfect than they were in his art, but that he did 
much more to raise the human and domestic affections, 
by exhibiting the purest model of them. I must think 
also, that it was better and more for the honour of God, 
that men should study the human form as He made 
it, whether they derived the impulse to that study from 
the Greeks or from any other people, than that they 
should reconstruct it according to notions and fictions of 
their own. Any passage out of the artificial to the 
living and the real must, I conceive, have been a pas- 
sage towards moral health and reformation. And I 
cannot but think that a sound acquaintance with the 
heartier life of the old Romans, such as the revival in 
the fifteenth century enabled its students to obtain, 
must have suggested some very frightful and yet not 
altogether useless comparisons, with Rome as it was in 
the days of Alexander VI. and Csesar Borgia. If the 
one was called Pagan civilization and the other Chris- 
tian, the young man of that age might be tempted to 
prefer the earlier: but since he would do so because 
the New Testament had taught him that he was bound 
to hate what was clearly of the devil, and to refer 
everything which had in it the taste and savour of 
truth to God, one would hope that the conflict of mind^ 
however terrible for a while, would at last bring him ta 
love that book best which testified against all ^Tong, 
and most vehemently against that which assumed the 
divine livery and banner. 

I have alluded to this contrast because I wish you 



IV.] UPON MODERN EUROPE. 337 

not to forget that my especial business is witli Roman 
civilization. I began this Lecture witli saying that 
I could not separate that from German civilization, 
though I looked upon them as distinct, markedly dis- 
tinct, from each other. You will at once gather from 
my previous remarks, that I regard the German Refor- 
mation as a wonderful and blessed development of that 
principle, of which I traced the working in our own 
Saxon people. The more one feels the inefficiency of 
the attempts at Reform of the Doctors in the councils of 
Pisa and Constance, — the more heartily does one rejoice 
in that Reform which began from a moral ground ; 
which appealed to the conscience of the people ; which 
advanced vigorously and triumphantly so long as it was 
broad, homely, national, so long as it was bearing wit- 
ness against the abominations of ecclesiastical practice^ 
so long as it was vindicating the sacredness of marriage 
and family life, so long as it was tearing down every 
veil that obstructed the vision of an actual Brother and 
Lord of men's spirits, so long as it rested all earthly 
duties and obligations on a divine ground, making them, 
the result and carrying out of the Will which rules the 
universe. I need not remind you that the greatest ob- 
struction to their progress, in the judgment of the 
Reformers themselves, arose from the fanatics who sought 
to overthrow the reverence for relationships, and to build 
up a spiritual society which should dispense with them. 
I need not remind you that any blots which we lament 
over, and their adversaries triumph over, in their own 
acts, arose from their inability to vindicate the sacredness 
and dignity of these relationships as they desired to do, 

z 



338 INFLUENCE OF EOME AND GEEMANY [lECT. 

or from some unworthy compromise witli the errors 
and sins of their patrons. The result of the history, 
if one meditates on it thoughtfully and carefully, com- 
paring it with that of previous and of subsequent times, 
is one of extreme wonder and thankfulness, that such 
a divine deliverance was effected for the world through 
the old Saxon faith and reverence, from a state of 
things which had become more utterly immoral heart- 
less and godless than that of any period in the world's 
history, — except, possibly, the reigns of the first seven 
Caesars. But in spite of this wonder and gratitude, one 
cannot but feel that something was wanting, which tliis 
German movement did not supply, something to com- 
bine with it and make it effectual. It seems as if the 
Latin nations could not profit by it, as they might 
have done, because the characteristic of the old Roman 
civilization, — the reverence for fathers, — was but feebly 
developed in it. This reverence had no doubt been 
very imperfect in these nations ; but the recollection of 
it had been kept alive by the name of the general father 
of Christendom, — which they had been taught to asso- 
ciate with the very existence of the Church. It certainly 
needed to find some outlet and some fountain which the 
German teachers had but obscurely pointed out. 

The period between the Reformation and the French 
Revolution would furnish, I think, plentiful confirma- 
tions and illustrations of this remark, if I had time to 
produce them. But I am anxious to dwell upon one 
fact which ought to increase our sense of our national 
blessings and responsibilities. That union of Roman 
and German civilization which has been granted to the 



IV.] UPON MODERN EUROPE. 339 

Scotch and Englisli, and wliicli prevents us from iden- 
tifying ourselves with either class of the nations into 
which we commonly divide Western Europe, has im- 
parted to us more of the old patriarchal feeling than 
belongs to the Protestant nations of the Continent; 
while, at the same time, we have kept up, perhaps more 
intensely than any of them, our conviction that it cannot 
be satisfied in the way in which the purely Latin nations 
are trying to satisfy it, and that though the fatherly prin- 
ciple may be expansive enough for the whole of human 
society, it never can exist while it is not owned as the 
root of a pure domestic life. The belief in that last 
truth, — in the inseparable connexion of the family with 
whatever is right, manly, godly, in the life of the citizen, 
— your ancestors, it seems to me, held more firmly 
than ours. So solemn a subject, affecting us indivi- 
dually as well as socially, ought to furnish an occasion 
for any thing rather than flattery. I am not consciously 
guilty of that sin when I use these words. For I speak 
them with the most earnest conviction of the obligation 
which is laid upon us one and all, not to dissipate such 
an inheritance if it has indeed come down to us ; and 
of the possibility, which becomes more manifest the 
more we read history, — the more we consider our own 
times, — that we may suffer that great and infinite loss 
which other people have suffered, and may thereby be 
deprived of all the blessings which we claim in the 
names of Civilization and of Christianity. Before I con- 
clude, I will illustrate my remark and the moral of it, 
from another and more recent page of history. 

z 2 



340 INFLUENCE OF EOME AND GERMANY [LECT. 

There probably never was a society so brilliant as 
that in France before the Revolution ; none in which 
so many schemes of social life were discussed with so 
much lightness and gracefulness. There probably never 
was a time in which theorists dwelt so little upon the 
human relationships, in which the practical indifference 
to them was greater. Yet when the earthquake came 
which shook France and all the Latin nations, far more 
than the Revolution of the sixteenth century had shaken 
the German, the first word that one hears is the word 
Brotherhood; all men of all classes are to embrace 
each other as brothers. How they were to do so, no one 
could tell them ; how brotherhood could be prevented 
from leading to mutual destruction, was a lesson which 
statesmen and philosophers had not learnt. The very 
name seemed to terrify them, as if it was one which 
they had never heard before, as if all disorder and 
destruction were involved in it. Still it did burst out 
of the hearts of the very lowest people. They had 
been taught other phrases and symbols which they could 
repeat and use occasionally ; this was the one they clung 
to habitually ; this lived on amidst the death of consti- 
tutions, lived on through the fires which it seemed itself 
to have kindled. It terrified us in England and Scot- 
land, often perhaps frightened us out of all propriety 
and wisdom. But it did not exactly frighten us in the 
same manner as it did the people on the Continent. For 
by degrees the impression on our minds became stronger, 
that fraternity was not a bad thing in itself, that it was 
bad only because there needed something else to be joined 



IV.] UPON MODERN EUROPE. 341 

witli it. Brotherhood seemed to lis a poor and miserahle 
thing if it was separated from Fatherhood. Our old 
Roman doctors had taught us that ; we had found from 
a higher oracle what their dim and mysterious utter- 
ances signified, to what they were pointing. It did not, 
therefore, cause us any delight to see this belief of 
fraternity trampled under foot by a military tyrant; 
that might be necessary, might be beneficial on the 
whole for the world ; at least it implied that there must 
be a universal society somehow, and that a great Will 
must rule it. But this kind of universal government, 
this kind of Will, looked to us very unsightly ; this we 
thought we were bound to struggle with and put down. 
That this obligation is still laid upon us, that we 
ought to encounter the evil principle which substitutes 
mere sovereignty for fatherly authority, in whatever 
form it embodies itself, against whatever persons it puts 
forth its proud and godless pretensions, we are all, 
I trust, convinced. We feel that we ought to show all 
the tribes of the earth, that the true fatherly principle, 
instead of involving abject slavery, is the ground of 
all morality, of reciprocal rights and duties, of justice, 
of freedom. We perceive that this service is due to 
the Latin people of the West, who should belong to 
the same Christendom and Family as ourselves ; is 
due no less to the Mussulman, that we may teach him 
what is wanting to make him one of that family. We 
owe it, surely, even more to those who bow beneath 
our sceptre, — to those in all parts of the world who have 
found that there was no power in their arms or their 



342 INFLUENCE OF ROME AND GEEMANY [LECT. 

traditions to resist tlie Saxon energy and enterprise. Of 
these we have boasted enough. Must we not claim also 
the other portion of our inheritance ? Must we not un- 
derstand, whithersoever we go, that we are sent to the 
different races of the earth with a message, not that the 
West is to rule the East, not that British notions and 
traditions are to displace those in which they have 
grown up, hut that the Malay and the Hindoo have a 
right to claim the same Father as the Roman and the 
Goth, because He has claimed them for His children? 
Beginning from the highest truth which the old Koman 
saw dimly through his family institutions, and pro- 
claiming it simply and broadly as it was proclaimed by 
those who overthrew the Boman Pantheon and laid the 
foundation of Christendom, we may be permitted to 
establish a domestic and a national life in countries 
where it has never existed, to restore it where it is 
withered and almost dead through the want of some 
sustaining principle. Thus we may exercise over an 
empire as wide as that of the Boman, the very influence 
which he needed to bind his provinces together, for the 
absence of which no arms and no laws could com- 
pensate. 

We cannot despair of any nation of the world, though 
its condition may look ever so mournful from its bar- 
barism, or its false and fading civilization, or its insincere 
religion, while we believe that there is in the highest 
Will an inexhaustible energy which is always at work 
to create and to regenerate. But we shall despair for 
all nations, we shall despair for ourselves, if we believe 



lY.] UPON MODERN EUKOPE. 343 

tliat any macliineiy secular or religious, tliat any bene- 
volence or wisdom of ours, can quicken human society 
generally, can quicken any, — the most fortunate, — portion 
of it. Whilst we cherish that delusion, no distant vision 
will look so ghastly and terrible, as that which is daily 
before our eyes. The thought of our own population 
will mock us, defy us, madden us, more than the thought 
of the multitudes who worship Kali and Juggernaut. 
Before the actual dense wretchedness, physical and 
moral, of our streets, the appliances of states, the 
schemes and dogmas of philosophers and divines, are 
discomfited and put to flight. But no one experiment 
begun in the faith that there is a fatherly . government 
over the world, no one attempt to prove that it exists 
and to connect it with human relationships, has failed. 
Its success has not fallen short of our dreams; it tran- 
scends them immeasurably. Every such experiment 
demonstrates that, if Christian men were as honest as 
the old Romans, and believed as much in the words that 
they speak, every household in the land might be as 
noble, because it might as fully realize the union between 
the divine and the human fatherhood, as that which 
has been made dear to the hearts of Scotchmen and of 
Englishmen by ' The Cotter's Saturday Night.' 

It has been impossible not to recollect this great 
utterance of one of your own prophets, whilst I have 
been speaking of domestic and national greatness. And 
it has been dithcult, while I have been speaking of the 
perpetuity of the Roman dominion under its different 
phases, not to think of another prophecy, a prophecy in 



344 INFLUENCE OF ROME AND GERMANY [LECT. 

the more usual and modern sense of the word, which 
went out from your city, and which has awakened some 
speculations, possibly also some searchings of heart, on 
both sides of the Tweed, if not on the banks of the 
Tiber. You will easily suppose that I allude to an 
oracle which is stamped with the high authority of your 
representative. He looks forward to a time when an 
artist shall be sketching the ruins of St. Paul's from a 
broken arch of London Bridge. In that time he expects 
that the Vatican may still be standing in all its glory. 
There are those who have complained of this sentence, 
as unpatriotic, and as offering encouragement to those 
who hate us. I cannot join in that censure. I cannot 
conceive that a patriot has any higher duty than to 
remind his countrymen of the instability of their mere 
material greatness, to tell them that the buildings which 
bear witness of the extent and mightiness of their com- 
merce may fall along with those in which they and their 
fathers have worshipped. Would to God that the image 
of that future painter rose oftener before us, to remind 
us that every single person in the crowds whicli are 
passing every hour and moment over London Bridge, — 
that every man who has knelt in St. Paul's before or 
since the fire, — has an immortality which does not belong 
to ships or towers or temples ! The objection to Mr. 
Macaulay's words might have taken and may still take 
another form. If posterity does not deal more gently 
with that which our age leaves behind it, than we have 
dealt with the works of our forefathers, the critic of some 
distant period may affirm that one of our most illustrious 



JV.] UPON MODEEN EUROPE. 345 

cotemporaries was so misled by liis prejudices against 
the men of another nation and another faith, that he 
fancied he could persuade them, — with all the memorials 
of ruin before their eyes, with words that intimate the 
perishableness of all mortal things continually on their 
lipsj — that the houses which they now inhabit have some 
special exemption from the general law, and that the 
palaces of popes will have a duration which has been 
denied to the palaces of emperors. We may be sure that 
there was no such uncharitable judgment or purpose, in 
the mind of the eloquent writer when he gave forth 
these sentiments. We may take it for granted that he 
only wished to impress us, by a contrast which would 
strike us as more vivid and startling than any other, with 
a lesson respecting ourselves which we have all need to 
lay deeply to heart. You would not feel that he dimi- 
nished his claims upon your esteem — you would feel 
that he augmented them — if he told you, — perhaps he 
has told you already, in words which you cannot forget, — 
that even your city, notwithstanding its grand associations 
with the forms of nature and with the records of history, 
though every old and modern street in it reminds you 
of warriors with sword and pen who have fought your 
battles, may suffer that sentence which the greatest 
cities of the world have suffered. If a stranger who 
has no claim to speak to you at all but that which your 
kindness has given him, — yet who is bound by that 
kindness, by reverence for your past history, by strong 
affection and gratitude to many of your living citizens, 
to say not what is pleasant but what is true, — should 



346 INFLUENCE OF EOME AND GERMANY. [lECT. IV. 

venture to recal that tliouglit to your minds, lie would 
do so in the full conviction that neither E-ome nor Lon- 
don nor Edinburgh will be suffered to fall, or to lose any 
portion of its grandeur, till its work is done ; till He 
who knows all things shall perceive that it is concealing 
the prospect of the Eternal City, in which Italians, 
Englishmen, Scotchmen, shall find then, may find now, 
their common home, their Father's house. 



NOTES. 



Note I. Page 211. 

A VERY able and interesting article, on the Study of History, in 
the "Westminster Heview for October last, contains a statement 
respecting the coincidence of Koman greatness with a belief in utter 
falsehoods nearly identical with that in the text. I had not read this 
paper at the time I wrote the Lecture. I recommend it to the 
serious consideration of the historical student, both for its substan- 
tial merits, and because it is the best exposition of the opinion 
wdiich I have endeavoured to refute. I would acquit the accom- 
plished author of any indifference to truth ; I believe he loves it 
heartily ; though I feel that if I adopted his conclusion, I should 
despair of ever finding it, and should regard the whole universe as a 
great lie. 



Note II. Page 211. 

The passage from Niebuhr's letter, which I took from Miss 
Winkworth's excellent translation, will be found in vol. ii. pp. 385) 
3S6, of the German Life. The passage stands thus in the 
original : — 

' AVenn man an die alten Rbmer zuriickdenkt, welehe cine Ueli- 
' gion der reinsten Wahrhaftigkeit, der Treue und Redlichkeit 

* beherrschte : — das kommt einem hier am allerwunderlichsten vor. 

* Wii'd es mir ja moglich meine Geschichie fortzusetzen, so werde 



348 KOTES. 

' icli es wagen, zeugniss zu gebeu, wie diese Religion, die ganz 

* etwas anderes als Stoicismus war, die Grosse der alten repub- 

* licanisclien Zeit begriindet hat, und das gauze Leben der Ver- 

* fassung von ilir abhing.' 



Note HI. Page 213—218. 

The passages from Savigny to which I have referred will be found 
in his * System des heutigen Romischen Rechts,' book ii. chap. i. § 53, 
(especially pp. 341, 342, of vol. i. of the Ed. 1840 ;) and in the 
whole of § 54, (especially pp. 350 and 351, with the notes P. and G.) 



Note IV. Page 231. 

The passage from Ovid is in the Pasti, book vi. 1. 267, be- 
ginning — 

' Vesta eadem est quae terra.' 

Note V. Page 258. 

I have not done justice to the book On the Nature of the Gods, 
nor to the part which Cotta plays in it, in that I have not quoted 
the very remarkable passage in Chapter xxxii. of Book I. ; in which 
he makes the all-important distinction between the notion tliat the 
gods are made in the image of men, and that men are made in the 
image of the gods. I do not know many modern authors in whom 
one can find five lines of such pregnant theology as these : * Nee 

* vero intelligo, cur maluerit Epicurus deos hominum similes dicere, 

* quam homines deorum. Quaeres, quid intersit. Si enim hoc illi 

* simile sit, esse illud huic. Video ; sed hoc dico, non ab hominibus 

* form 86 figuram venisse ad deos : dii enim semper fuerunt ; nati 

* numquam sunt, si quidem seterni sunt futuri ; at homines nati: ante 

* igitur humana forma, quam homines, ea, qua erant forma dii im- 
' mortales. Non ergo illorum humana forma, sed nostra divina 
' dicenda est.' 

I would also invite the reader's attention to the very beautiful 



NOTES. 349 

passage, in which Cotta argues that Epicurus necessarily undermined 
Worship, however he might appear to cultivate it, when he divorced 
the idea of the gods from the idea of grace and love : ' Quum enim 
' optimam et prsestantissimam naturam dei dicat esse, negat idem 
' esse in deo gratiam. ToUit id, quod maxime proprium est optimas 

* prsestautissimseque naturae Vos autem quid mali datis, quum 

' in imbecillitate gratificationem et benevolentiam ponitis ! Ut enim 
' omittani vim et naturam deorum : ne homines quidem censetis, nisi 

* imbecilli essent, futuros beneficos et benignos fuisse ? Nulla est 
' caritas naturalis inter bonos ? Carum ipsum verbum est amoris, ex 
' quo amicitise nomen est ductum ; quam si ad fructum nostrum 
' referemus, non ad illius commoda, quern diligimus, non erit ista 
' amicitia, sed mercatura quaedam utilitatum suarum. Prata et arva 
' et pecudum greges diliguntur isto modo, quod fructus ex eis 
' capiuntur: hominum caritas et amicitia gratuita est. Quanto igitur 

* magis deorum, qui nulla re egentes et inter se diligunt et homini- 

* bus consulunt.' 

The author of these sentiments represents the doctrine — if it has 
a representative among Cicero's friends, or honest men — that all 
religions are equally false to the Philosopher, and equally useful^to 
the Mas;istrate ! 



Note VI. Page 262. 

I have preferred to give my total' impression of the Book on 
Divination rather than to quote a number of distinct passages. The 
one which I have quoted, from the close of the second book, must not 
be taken as representing the spirit of the treatise, but rather as quali- 
fying and controlling the sentiments which both the Ciceros had 
uttered in the course of it. It is clear that Cicero had utterly lost 
faith in divinations, but that there was something in divination 
which he felt to be indispensable to the state, not because it was 
false, but because it was true. He may have often hesitated him- 
self whether this was his reason. He may often in worse moods 
have attributed to himself another. But there is a Philip sober to 
whom we may always appeal from Philip druuk, a man and therefore [^^' 
a statesman, who is always better than the politician. 



350 NOTES. 

Note YIL Page 263. 

The memorable passage respecting the impossibility of thanking 
the Gods for the gift of virtue, is found in ' De Nat. Deorum.' 
lib. iii. c. 36. 

Note YIII. Page 265. 

See ' Republic,' lib. i. c. 36. I do not see any proof that the 
passage in Lactantius was derived from this chapter. If it was, 
the quotation was made by the Christian Pather for a purpose which 
might not be Cicero's purpose. It is surely much safer, therefore, 
to adhere to the original, however imperfect and mutilated it may 
be. To my mind it proves that the King and Pather of whom Scipio 
speaks is more than the sole monarch to whom the different philo- 
sophers quoted by the African divine are said to bear witness. 

Note IX. Page 271. 

It is scarcely necessary that I should urge the reader to turn for 
himself to the passage from Lucretius, of which I have given so 
bald a version. It is contained in the lines between 342 and 370 of 
the second book. 

' Prseterea genus humanum,' &c. 

Note X. Page 327. 

Pleury reports the conversation between the Pope and John of 
Salisbury (taking his narrative from the latter) with the malicious 
pleasure of a Gallican. See Histoire Ecclesiastique, liv. xvi. c. 15, 
A.D. 1156. 



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